Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My Grade 6 son is interested in doing a science fair project on signs and symptons of breast cancer and how to treat it. Any ideas would be highly valued.

I went to Google and typed in:

science fair projects breast cancer

and got lots of relevant URLs back. Reading through them should give you plenty of ideas, I hope.

Breast cancer usually has no symptoms in its early stages. Later on, when the tumor develops, the symptoms include: lumps (usually painless) in the breast or underarm, or noticeable indentations on the breast. Here is a good website for more information on the topic: http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/guid ... -and-types

From what I've seen, many cancer experiments out there are geared towards high schoolers. But if you think your child is up to the challenge, you could definitely let him/her try. Some project ideas for breast cancer can be found on this site: http://www.juliantrubin.com/fairproject ... ancer.html (Make note that they are high school level projects.)

Easier 6th-grade level projects could involve gathering data from previous studies and then determining who is most at risk for breast cancer, or in which area of the world is breast cancer most common, or what is the best way to detect breast cancer, etc.

Hope that helps! And feel free to ask more questions!

-Tiffany

Not to take away from your son's initial thought, maybe a questionnaire to assess quality of life (QL) in breast cancer
patients would be an alternative.

The idea is that one would come with a series of questions, for example 15-20 for his project, to measure QL in
these patients. It has been shown that people diagnosed with cancer sometimes show a better quality of life compare
to healthy individuals.

The significance of this project would be that one can use collected information by this questionnaire to come with
interventions to improve any aspects of cancer patient life.

I would be happy to provide you with more information if you decide to pursue this path.

Good luck,
-Rooz

My son must do an investigation. He was interested in breast cancer but we are struggling to come up with a good topic for investigation. Any possible great ideas for a Grade 6 science fair investigation would be highly appreciated.

Tala

Rooz wrote:Not to take away from your son's initial thought, maybe a questionnaire to assess quality of life (QL) in breast cancer
patients would be an alternative.

The idea is that one would come with a series of questions, for example 15-20 for his project, to measure QL in
these patients. It has been shown that people diagnosed with cancer sometimes show a better quality of life compare
to healthy individuals.

The significance of this project would be that one can use collected information by this questionnaire to come with
interventions to improve any aspects of cancer patient life.

I would be happy to provide you with more information if you decide to pursue this path.

Good luck,
-Rooz

Rooz,

Please assist further!

Here may be some good ideas for an investigation:
~How accurate is astrology/fortune telling?
~What causes lightning? (Not as simple as one may think...there are many different theories out there.)
~What happens when you add pineapple to jello?
~Why do animals develop various coloring patterns? (For example, why poisonous tree frogs are so brightly colored, etc.)
~What is the nature-nurture question in regards to a child's development?

To be honest, the signs and symptoms of breast cancer may not be the best topic for an investigation, since the answers are well-known and fairly unchanging. (It'll be more like a research report than an actual investigation/experiment.) The questions I listed above have more varying answers, or have large scientific concepts behind them, so there will be much more to write about.

If any of the above topics appeals to you and your son, I'll be glad to provide help.

The only way you could investigate the signs of breast cancer is if you know someone who has just been diagnosed with it (and if you do, I'm sorry). What he could do is go to a hospital and meet with one of their doctors and ask him to ask his breast cancer patients if they would like to participate in a survey for a kid's science project, and then you could give the doctor surveys to give to the patients who say 'yes.' The survey could be a list of symptoms that are commonly used to diagnose breast cancer, but it should also include an 'other' box with room for an explanation because everyone doesn't have the same symptoms. You could then take that survey and make a pie chart out of it, and you would be investigating the most common experimental symptoms of breast cancer because the theoretical ones are one that are predicted. Once you're done, you can compare them to the theoretical symptoms which can be found by a simple Google search.

To answer the question you had for Rooz....

I did a quick internet search and through Wiki found an example survey. It also lists how to score it. I think this is a great project for his age and looking at the questions, nothing seems too scary or intimidating for his age.

Some information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of ... ealthcare)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SF-36

The survey an scoring instructions:
http://www.rand.org/health/surveys_tool ... 6item.html

Good luck!