Project Guides (Page 6)

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This tutorial provides a basic summary of linear and nonlinear springs and their associated equations for force, stiffness, and potential energy. You will need a basic understanding of calculus (integrals and derivatives) to understand the section on nonlinear springs. Definitions A linear spring is one with a linear relationship between force and displacement, meaning the force and displacement are directly proportional to each other. A graph showing force vs. displacement for a linear spring… Read more

Microorganisms Safety Guide

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Bacteria are ubiquitous, and live within the human gut, and in every corner of our environment. We come in contact with bacteria on a daily basis. Hand washing is 99.9% effective at decontaminating us from bacteria that might reside on the skin. Therefore, when the proper safety precautions are taken, colonies of microorganisms can be safely isolated from homes, yards, gardens, etc. The majority of microorganisms are non-pathogenic, but bacterial cultures or petri plates that contain any type… Read more

Mind Mapping

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Mind mapping example. Click image for full-size image. Mind mapping refers to a technique that designers and engineers use to express and generate ideas. All that mind mapping really is, however, is a way to get all of the ideas in your head down onto paper. There is no right or wrong way to mind map. It is simply a visual representation of the thoughts in your head, and it often looks like organized chaos. Why Mind Map? Mind mapping helps you to release… Read more

Sample Size: How Many Survey Participants Do I Need?

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In order to have confidence that your survey results are representative, it is critically important that you have a large number of randomly-selected participants in each group you survey. So what exactly is "a large number?" For a 95% confidence level (which means that there is only a 5% chance of your sample results differing from the true population average), a good estimate of the margin of error (or confidence interval) is given by 1/√N, where N is the number of participants or… Read more

Specify Requirements

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Design Requirements Design requirements state the important characteristics that your solution must meet to be successful. For example, imagine that your problem statement relates to grocery store bags. You want to design a better grocery store bag--one that uses less expensive material than the paper and plastic bags that already exist. Your design requirements are the important characteristics that your bag must meet to be successful. Based on your problem statement, a successful bag… Read more

Stress, Strain, & Strength: An Introduction to Materials Science

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Introduction A collage of 8 photos with the text "What do all of these pictures have in common?" over the center of the collage. The pictures, clockwise from top left: the leaning tower of Pisa, the armless statue of the Venus de Milo, a soda can about to be popped open, a snapped pencil, a dog chewing a bone, the cracked Liberty Bell, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge as its deck collapses and the shattered face and eroded body of the Sphinx. … Read more

Test and Redesign

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User Test The first step in user testing is to get in contact with the users of your solution. Go back to your problem statement, and remember your potential users. You will want to test your solution on this group of people. For example, if you are designing a website for kindergarten students, you will want to test your final solution with kindergarteners. When it comes to testing, there is no such thing as too many testers! The more people that you are able to test with the more you… Read more

Titration Tutorial: Tips & Tricks for Titrating

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Not sure what titration is or what you can do with it? Then you are in the right place! In this tutorial, you will find information on titration, including the chemicals that are commonly used and the chemical reactions that make titration work, as well as how titration is performed and some tips to get better results. What is Titration? Titration is a method commonly used in chemistry to figure out the amount of a chemical in a solution. This chemical is called the titrand. To figure out the… Read more

What Are Variables? How To Choose Variables For Your Science Project

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What are variables? In science, a variable is anything that can change or be different. It can be a thing (like a shirt or a jacket), a characteristic (like rough or smooth), or a situation (like sunny or cloudy). Scientists want to know how things work. They want to understand why things happen and use that information to predict what will happen in the future. To do this, they use experiments to see if one thing causes another thing to happen. They follow a special process called… Read more

Accelerometer Technical Note

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The following information is intended to supplement the Science Buddies tutorial on using the accelerometer sensor options in Google's Science Journal app. This resource provides more in-depth explanation of the science behind an accelerometer and the X, Y, Z, and Linear accelerometer options in the app. What is an accelerometer? An accelerometer is a device that measures acceleration, which is the change in an object's velocity per second. Since velocity is measured in meters per second… Read more

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