For the physically disabled it is quite difficult to get anything done by themselves in their daily routine. There have been various science projects that have tried to work out a personal robotic helper for the handicapped. These were given set programming and followed a specific order.

This means that if a new situation which is not programmed comes up the robot becomes useless. Now all that is about to change. With the help of a project called ROBODANCE 5 Robert Oschler hopes to build a robot that can be told by the patient exactly what to do. The robot will be able to read facial movements, jaw clenches, and track eye movements.

All this visual data is fed into what is called the Emotiv system. Now while it is not strictly reading a thought right out of the brain, it is quite close. If the robot can interpret the new data and take actions accordingly it is a major step above and beyond what a programmed robot was able to do in the past.

There are also some science projects on robotics which are currently working on getting the robots into the area of mind reading. Kinesics and Synchronization in Personal Assistant Robotics or KASPAR is one such robot that is making headway in the field.

The last thing that comes to your mind when you think of a slab of concrete is smart green choice and somehow that is exactly what Henk Jonkers has come up with. In an interesting science project conducted in the Technical University Delft, in the Netherlands Jonkers has come up with bio- concrete.

Microorganisms are added in the concrete mix that can actually fix the cracks that appear in the concrete over time. The bacteria is of a type which eats calcium lactate and excretes calcite which fills up the crack. The spores of this bacteria can lie dormant for 50 years till water enters the material.

The bacteria lies in a dormant form within the concrete in the highly alkaline environment of the material and becomes active when the material cracks enough to let through water. Now it begins to multiply and grow and its excretion is the material that becomes the filling repair of the crack that was formed.

Is it totally ingenious or totally far fetched? The trials conducted by Jonkers have been successful enough and may be the concrete may come into commercial production in the not so distant future. Some more experimentation may find additional uses for the main product of this science project.

Science Projects dealing with living beings can be a bit complex to set up as no two living creatures are identical. Even within the same species an individual member may have traits that another one may not. Still with insects the number of variable traits is not that many and when it comes to food there may be more than one common trait.

This science experiment will allow you to check if honeybees can identify colors and remember them when they set out hunting for nectar. You will need the help of a beehive cultivator. We are going to use flowers in two color say red and blue, with a dip in between where a fluid can be stored. The red artificial flowers are to be filled with sweet water and the blue ones are to be filled with salty water.

Now the area is to be cordoned off and the beehive cultivator is to release the bees. Notice how long it takes them to identify the red flowers as akin to the nectar and reject the salty blue flowers. Now have the bees returned to the hive by the cultivator. Now switch the places of the blue and red flowers in the area of experimentation.

Have the bees released again. You will notice that they go directly to the red flowers avoiding the blue ones altogether despite the location having been changed. Interesting science project to help confirm that honey bees can indeed identify and remember colors.

Most of us learn in school at a very young age that plants produce food using the process of photosynthesis. We know that the process involved the interaction of the green pigment known as chlorophyll and the presence of the gas carbon dioxide. Now in this science project we are going to attempt to prove these facts.

We will use two as close to identical plants to begin the experiment. Have them potted in identical pots as well which can be covered with a bell jar. It is transparent but does not allow outside air in. Now here is how we will proceed. One plant will be given plenty of carbon dioxide while the other one will be starved of the essential gas.

In the first bell jar with the plant under it light a candle and leave it to burn off all the oxygen. This plant under the bell jar will have a large supply of carbon dioxide. The other bell jar with the plant under it will have a dish with caustic soda. The caustic soda will absorb all the carbon dioxide in the air and the plant will have access to none. Seal the bell jars with petroleum jelly.

Now leave the plants undisturbed for a day. After that you will notice that the plant which had access to carbon dioxide has more starch in its leaves than the one that did not have any carbon dioxide with it under the bell jar. Quite an interesting science project.

Now here is an interesting proposition for a science project. Can you bake an ice cream? Of the first response is likely to be of course not. Ice cream belongs in the freezer and not in the oven. Put it in the oven to bake and you would not have any ice cream left but just some flavored milk in the bowl.

But humor me and think about it for a second. If you could actually bake ice cream wouldn’t it make an amazing experiment? Guess what? I am not kidding, you can actually bale ice cream in the oven. Want to know how? Just read on and who knows you may be able to try it out on your own to show how air bubbles can slow the penetration of hot air, resulting in a delicious baked ice-cream cookie treat.

Place some cookies on a baking sheet. Take about 4 eggs and separate the egg whites from the yolks, get your mom to help with this step. Now whisk the egg whites with Castor sugar  till you have mixed them well and stiff. Preheat the oven while you do the egg whisking. Now add a scoop of ice cream into the egg and sugar mix and coat it well.

Place it on top of the cookie in the baking sheet. Bake the ice cream for five minutes and remove the baking sheet from the oven. The ice cream would not have melted and the coating on it would give a nice crunchy outer casing to it. Here’s one tasty science project that you can dig into.

String instruments are the very basis on music in may cultures. In this science project we try to make a miniature string instrument by turning a matchbox into a guitar. It is not quite as difficult as it seems as we will be making a traditional acoustic guitar and not an electronic one.

In the old guitars the sound of music was produced by the vibration of the strings. the sound was then modulated by the hollow body of the guitar. That is why the huge Spanish Guitar was said to have a good sound as the hollow allowed the vibrations to achieve a true note. Now what all will you need to make the matchbox guitar?

A matchbox with its matchsticks emptied out. A set of four rubber bands all of which must have the same length. A small piece of balsam wood that can be used as the bridge of the guitar to give the strings some tension. And we are ready to construct our matchbox guitar. Now place the bridge piece of wood on the empty matchbox and open the matchbox one third of the way.

Put the rubber bands over the matchbox and the bridge and now make the bridge stand vertical to the matchbox. This will bring some tautness in the rubber bands.Now if you need them to be tighter just open the matchbox some more and you are ready to pluck away at the rubber bands and make music. Simple science projects can provide hours of fun.

We live in the environment and we don’t care for it. There are science projects that tell us that we are damaging the environment beyond belief. That creatures big and small are going extinct faster than ever before, but does that stop us? No. Does it make us feel that we need to do something to remedy the situation? Yes.

Unfortunately most of us feel strongly about the environment and its protection but do nothing to support those feelings. The few who do manage to get involved in rallies and protests do so for a short time and do not really have a large impact in solving the gigantic problem. So is there no solution? Of Course there is.

Some one truly focused on a specific problem can do more to solve it than a person worrying about the whole environment in general. For instance the population of Dalmatian Pelicans in Europe has increased thanks to hunting bans and setting up of new natural reserves where the birds can flourish.

The truth is that we are not going about tackling climate change the right way. The proper way to get results for reversing economic problems and potential damage is to handle it at the grass roots level. It is the local community that needs to be involved and motivated to help solve the problem. Anything else is just another science project gone wrong.

Most science fair projects tend to follow the steps of the scientific method, but is the scientific method restricted to the field of science? Not really. The elements of the scientific method can be used by people other than researchers and scientists. People with jobs such as marketing, selling, cooking and even defending the law can use the scientific method principles.

Trial and error is one of the elements of the scientific method and this is common to a number of professionals. A cook wants to make the perfect flambe and he will use a number of different alcoholic combinations before he hits the best one. And this means he has to experiment with rum, brandy, wine and a number of trials before he gets that flambe perfected.

If that’s too simplistic imagine a corporate marketing executive who wants to increase the sales of his company. What does he do?He evaluates where the company is making a profit and where it goes into a loss. He makes a plan to improve the revenue generation and then he tweaks the plan to keep it useful. This busy executive in the pinstriped suit is also using the scientific method.

It is not so very different in many other non scientific fields. In fact people use the scientific method in their work and personal lives without even realizing that they are doing so. That’s why almost everything can become a science project of some interest.

In a science project you need to be able to do the same experiment over and over again. Only changing one of the many variables at a time so that you can get the most accurate answer to the problem question. So it is essential to have a few set steps to follow each time you do the experiment.

One of the things to consider is the problem that you want to solve. The better you define your questions the easier it is to answer them. So take your time coming up with the hypothesis that you want to use for the experiments.

Next you need to consider all the elements that form a part of the experiment. These will include the obvious variables such as the stuff that you physically use to perform the experiment and the not so obvious variables such as temperature, pressure and humidity.

Make your experiment as controlled as possible. Any number of variables can affect the experiment that you are trying to perform, so it is quite a job trying to keep the conditions almost exactly the same no matter how many times you repeat the experiment. When you have all the conditions figured out you can perform your science experiments in ease and know that the result will be a great science project.

There are a number of foods that people can be allergic to. One such product is the common egg. In this science project we are going to try and find substitutes for eggs in recipes. To know what can be used in place of the egg we need to know the basic job that the egg performs in the recipe.

Eggs primarily perform three functions in a recipe. The first is binding. Egg is used to hold the different ingredients of the dish together. As in a batter that can be used to fry fritters. The second is leavening agent. This allows the food to rise when it is beaked. It accounts for the softness of cakes and souffles. The third is as a thickening agent. Like how it is added to a dish such as a sauce to thicken it.

Now depending on the recipe you can use a substitute which will not alter the taste too much but still do without the egg. Substitutes for egg include banana and gelatin for binding. If its leavening agents you want you can use baking power, vinegar or butter milk with baking soda. On the other hand a thickener could be corn starch. Also used as thickeners banana, tofu, and tapioca flour. For the science project pick one recipe and use one egg substitute at a time till you find the ideal one.