Eighth Grade, Human Behavior Science Projects (31 results)
If you're interested in learning more about how people think, what motivates them, how well their memories work, or any other of the fascinating things that make us human, then you're in the right place!
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Try the annual Engineering Challenge from Science Buddies! Open to all students worldwide, a new challenge and prizes are announced every January. Explore the current challenge as well as ones from past years!
Can you pat your head with one hand while you rub your stomach with the other? This science project idea is kind of like doing that, but this project can actually give you some insight into how your mind works. The task is to name colors. It sounds simple enough, but see what happens when color words get in the way.
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In this engineering challenge, you will build a car powered by nothing but a rubber band. The farther the car goes, and the fewer materials you use to build it, the higher your score. Enter your score in the 2024 Science Buddies Engineering Challenge for a chance to win prizes! Teachers, lesson plan versions of this challenge are also available.
AI (artificial intelligence)-generated text is a hot topic for many reasons. Computers can now generate convincing paragraphs or even pages of text that look like they were written by a human. How do you know if a news article you are reading was written by a human or an AI? How does a teacher know if a student's essay was written by an AI? How do you know this text was not written by an AI? In this science project, you will conduct an experiment to see if volunteers can correctly identify…
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Does your home have any pet doors or gates for dogs, cats, or other animals? Some automatic pet doors can be set up to allow only certain animals through. These doors can help you control which pets are able to go outside alone or which ones have access to specific food, litter boxes, or toys. But why buy such a door when you can make one? In this project you will build your own automatic pet door that works with a magnetic collar tag. Exactly how you use it is up to you!
Having a younger brother or sister can be a real chore. They can get into your things and mess up all your stuff. But have you ever thought that when younger siblings do this kind of thing, they are actually learning about the world around them and how to interact with their environment? Every day, a young child's brain is getting new information about his or her environment and developing ways to organize that information. Learning about and understanding this conduct is the study of human…
What makes you notice someone in a crowd? Why do some things stand out, while others melt into the background? In this science project you can investigate the psychology of how things get noticed, by studying how our brains perform a visual search.
Think back to the last time you went to the grocery store. How well can you describe the person who was ahead of you in the check-out line? How many details do you remember about the person? How accurate do you think your memory is? Here is a project to investigate the accuracy of people's observations during everyday life.
Psychologists have long studied why people find certain faces more attractive than others. One interesting method used in this area of research is mixing several faces together to make a composite face. The composite face averages the input faces, so that small, non-symmetric features tend to get lost. In this human behavior science project, you will use an online tool to make composite faces, and determine how they compare to real faces in perceived attractiveness.
The Stroop effect describes an experiment about the time it takes to name the color of printed words. When you try to name the color in which color words are printed, it takes longer when the color word differs from the ink color than when the color word is the same as the ink color. This project is an interesting variation: what happens if you 'warp' the words into a curved shape that is harder to recognize as a word? Will the Stroop effect still happen? How 'warped' do the words have to be in…
The Science Buddies project Design Your Own 3D Printed Optical Illusion shows you how to make your own 3D printed "anomalous mirror symmetry" illusions (Figure 1). The illusions are based on the work of Dr. Kokichi Sugihara. You can read his original paper about the illusions in the Bibliography.
Figure 1. Two versions of the "impossible arrow" shape that appears to point to the right while its reflection in the mirror appears to point to the left. Which…
Okay, now you've done it. You goofed off, didn't study for your math test, and didn't do well. Mom and Dad are not going to be happy. In fact, they might even be angry. They don't say anything when they see your test, but you can tell from their faces that they are angry. But how can you tell? How can you tell if someone is angry, or happy, or sad? The answer is that you have learned how to tell someone's emotional state from his or her facial expressions. Are facial expressions of happiness or…
If someone is smiling, it means they're happy, right? Well, not always. Sometimes people smile to be polite, or because they want to "appear" happy or friendly for social reasons. How easy is it to spot which smiles are genuine and which are fake? Try this science fair project to find out!
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