Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Twelfth Grade Science Projects (Page 6)

Motorizing a Robotic Hand

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Imagine how cool it would be to have your own motorized robot hand. Well, stop imagining and turn that daydream into reality! Start out by designing and building a robot hand. The Science Buddies project Grasping With Straws: Make a Robot Hand Using Drinking Straws shows you a simple way to make a robot hand with drinking straws, or you can design a robot hand from any other materials you think are suitable. Your hand design will need sewing threads, or some other mechanism, for motors to… Read more

Expression Cloning

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

What is expression cloning and how is it used in the biotechnology industry? How are plasmids constructed for use in a bacterial expression system? You can investigate these questions and more using bacterial expression kits meant for high school classes. You will need a laboratory space equipped to grow bacteria and carry out simple molecular biology. A kit with plasmids and bacterial cells to transform are also needed. Here are two possibilities: BioBuilder What a Colorful World Kit … Read more

How Do You Know Where You Are Without GPS? Dead Reckoning and Inertial Navigation

Science Fair Project Idea

Engineering Design Process

Put a meter stick on the ground. Starting at one end of the stick, close your eyes and try to walk exactly one meter. Open your eyes. How close were you? Now try it again with five, ten, or twenty meters. Does it get harder as the distance gets bigger? Without an outside reference from your visual system, it's quite difficult to know exactly how far you've gone! Electronic navigation systems face the same problem. Without an external reference like the global positioning system (GPS), it's very… Read more

Build an Arduino Robot

Science Fair Project Idea

Engineering Design Process

The Science Buddies Bluebot Kit contains parts to build four different robots: A motion-activated robot that uses a passive infrared (PIR) sensor A light-tracking robot that uses photoresistors A line-following robot that uses infrared emitter-detectors An obstacle-avoiding robot that uses bump sensors However, in each project, the sensors are hard-wired to control the robot's motors. This allows the robot to steer left and right based on input from two sensors, but it does not allow the… Read more

Less Cowbell! The Unconstrained Truth About Constrained-Layer Damping

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Noise is everywhere. From the clanking of a cowbell to the din of the lunchroom, we are surrounded by noise. Sometimes there's no way to get away from it, but there is a way to deal with it—constrained-layer damping. By simply creating a layered sandwich of somewhat flexible materials, what was once a noisy cowbell can become a "noise blanket." This science fair project shows you how to transform a noisy piece of metal into a sound-muffling constrained-layer damper. You'll record the… Read more

Detecting Exoplanets Using Transit Photometry—Advanced

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

In astronomy, a transit (or astronomical transit) is a phenomenon when a celestial body passes directly between a larger body and the observer. As viewed from a particular vantage point, the transiting body appears to move across the face of the larger body, covering a small portion of it. The word "transit" refers to cases where the nearer object appears smaller than the more distant object. Cases where the nearer object appears larger and completely hides the more distant object are known as… Read more

What is the Cheapest Way to Launch Payloads into Space?

Science Fair Project Idea

Engineering Design Process

A mass driver is a proposed device that could launch payloads into space using a long tube lined with electromagnets (Figure 1). Some scientists argue that such a launch system would offer long-term cost savings over the use of chemical rockets. Scientists have proposed theoretical electromagnetic launcher designs as far back as the 1970s (O'Neill 1979). More recently, some have proposed the use of railguns originally developed for the U.S. Navy (McNab and McGlasson 2022). Other types of… Read more

Winglets in Wind Tunnels

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Winglets are the short vertical "fins" at the wingtips of some airplanes. Have you ever wondered why they are there? If you have access to a wind tunnel, you can build model airfoils with and without winglets and see for yourself. If you're really ambitious, you can also build your own wind tunnel. Read more

Using Synthetic DNA as a Secret Barcode

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

How would you secretly mark a bank robber during a robbery? What could you do to ensure that the ethically grown cotton you grew and shipped off for weaving and garment making was used to make the shipment of shirts you received weeks later? When we want to tag and track something, we often use a barcode. From grocery store foods to FedEx packages, barcodes are a way of tagging and identifying items. The fact that barcodes can be unique and are easy to read are key features. Not all things… Read more

Explore Interplanetary Spacecraft Maneuvers with FreeFlyer®

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

If you are interested in space travel and willing to do some coding, this project is for you! It uses FreeFlyer®—powerful software that allows you to simulate space travel—to explore essential mission questions. Space travel is complex. Many factors influence the trajectory of a spacecraft. Simulations like the ones generated by FreeFlyer are powerful, as they allow you to analyze each factor in isolation, and then visualize the effects in various ways. Once you familiarize… Read more

Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Twelfth Grade Science Projects (68 results)

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