If you are fascinated by the concept of writing with invisible ink it could lead to an interesting science project. After all if you can find the right combination of chemicals you could use anything for making invisible ink. The natural invisible ink that is available freely in most of our homes is the juice of citrus fruits such as lemon and orange.

You can just squeeze the juice and begin writing. Reading what you have written is also simple. Just warm up the paper with an electrical iron slightly and the words will jump out of the page. Its kid stuff really. Now if you are looking for something a bit more complicated which your kid brother will not be able to read by merely heating up the paper, read on.

Here’s what you need to make your own invisible ink. Take 2 tablespoons of cornstarch and 4 teaspoons of water and mix them in a small pan. Heat the mixture for a few minutes and stir constantly. Dip a toothpick in the mixture and write out your letter on paper. Let it dry.

Now to read the message you need to make a solution of 1 teaspoon of iodine in 10 teaspoons of water. Use a small sponge to dab the solution on to the secret letter. The writing will appear purple. Just make sure that you don’t use too much of the solution or you may just wipe out the message altogether. Have fun with the science project making many secret messages.

The thrill of a good mystery is always enhanced by a letter written in invisible ink. The good news is that not all invisible ink is as expensive as other supplies for a secret agent are. In fact this science project involves making and using invisible ink to write you friend a letter that everyone else will think is a blank page.

So if you want to share your secrets with that one special friend here’s what you need to do. Get hold of a lemon from the fruit basket . Now squeeze out the juice in a bowl and get ready to write your letter. Milk is also a good substitute for invisible ink on plain white paper. Once you have finished writing your letter you need to let the paper dry so that what you have written does not get smudged.

Now fold it up and deliver it to your friend. Of course you will need to tell your friend just how to read the letter too. That’s also quite simple. The trick is to heat up the paper so that the invisible writing shows up. You can use the heat from a radiator to do so. Just make sure that if you use any other source of heat you are careful not to burn up the paper with the secret message. You can make a science project out of discovering what other material can make good invisible ink.

As long as man has had imagination he has thought about conquering the skies. With air crafts already there you may wonder why scientists are still trying to design cars that can fly. The science project where you try to make a toy car fly is not just a pet project with kids. Many car designers the world over are trying to get a car into the air as well.

They are trying to get the design right so that there is enough fuel to make a trip through the skies. See what the optimum speed of a car would be and just how heavy or light it would be to fly with ease. Of course there is also the question of what kind of fuel should power the flying car. Since many conventional cars today are not green wouldn’t it be great to have a flying car that was eco friendly.

The green flying car would however need even more structural and system changes. Whole new systems would have to be developed so that the car uses renewable green energy sources such as solar energy or fuel cells. Then the technology would have to be modified to fit into the flying car body frame. A source of many science projects for years to come.

The depleting petroleum resources have sent the world into a panic. Many science projects involve finding alternatives to vehicles that are powered by petrol or diesel. Of these one of the fields that has received much attention is the development of solar power based fuel cell cars. Unfortunately while progress is being made in this field it is not being made fast enough.

The non renewable resources are being run through at an alarming rate and there does not seem to be any viable alternative visible. Of course the car companies are making valiant effort to find alternative means of fueling cars and Honda has done something quite nice recently.

Honda’s fuel cell electric car, the FCX Clarity, can go about 240 miles on a tank of hydrogen fuel. And the best part is that it’s emission is pure water. You can actually drink the so called waste product of the fuel. So much for pollution from the vehicle. The only trouble is that the car is expensive. Naturally in a few years time as the technology gets better and the car more popular there is a chance that the prices will come down as well.

So as long as you have a hydrogen refueling station somewhere close by you will be actually able to save the planet and get from one place to the other. Of course it will be some time before everyone gets into these cars, but the future of science technology seems bright.

It has been proved by repeated science experiments that you are a product of your genes. The genes that you get in part from each of your parents will influence a number of your own characteristics.  There are some genes that are stronger than others for instance you have a strong family nose or a typical jaw that runs through most family members.

This family resemblance is also thanks to the genes that you and your family share. The fact is that genes don’t just affect the way you look on the outside. They also affect you on a deeper level on the inside. Now scientists are trying to see just how the genes affect your health. There is a greater tendency for some diseases to be genetic.

Although it is not quite certain why some genes get passed on to create health and why some go on to make you sick, the fact is that genes do affect the state of your health. It could be something as simple as having sickle cell anemia because your parents passed you the genes. Or it could be a something more acute like a tendency to have a coronary disease.

The truth is that little is known as yet about the functioning of genes. Our present knowledge is basic and rudimentary. Everyday scientists are experimenting with new technology to learn more about the body and its secrets. It may be years before we complete this particular science project.

It is the ease of traveling that has made modern man’s life so much simpler than that of his earlier ancestors. With the development of new modes of transport it has become possible for a person to travel faster to more distant locales than ever before. Even then we are still obsessed with making travel faster and better and there is always some science project on that amplifies the fact that the next breakthrough is right around the next corner.

Of course it is difficult for the next mode of travel to be seen as logical and possible by a number of critics till it becomes a reality. people were fascinated by horseless carriages when cars made their first appearance. The trains were seen as iron monsters right out of fairy tales and of course there was the big argument about how God would have given man wings if he wanted him to fly. That did not stop the majority of the population traveling by aircraft after a few decades did it?

And so if today someone said that they would transport you in a device like the Star Treck transporter, you may be excused for believing that you will actually say  Beam me up Scoty and mean it in the near future. It would do well to remember the past of travel evolution before you dismiss it altogether. In fact it may be the science project of the near future.

There was a time that the telephone was merely an instrument that allowed you to speak with people who were far away, but that is no longer the case today. The phone today has become so much more. It can be seen as the ultimate evolving science project which seems to get more technology poured into it with each passing decade.

The phone is no longer stuck to the house, although land lines are still popular. It is the mobile phone that rules a person’s life today. In that mobile phone there are features that could rival a computer. You can do sums on the inbuilt calculator, set an alarm for the time you want to wake, or take a picture of something that amuses you.

You can set up alerts for upcoming events, birthdays, anniversaries and functions so that you never forget to attend one or wish a dear one. You can take a video of your friend giving her speech at the library or just check your email as you ride on the train. And there seems to be even more that you will be able to do with your phone if the developers have anything to say about it.

There is a good chance that you will soon not even have to touch your mobile phone to make it dial a number. Some science experiments are already underway with the scheme. It may not be long before it becomes a reality and is no longer science fiction. Maybe it will be the next science project to look out for.

An experiment or series of experiments can make a good science fair project. However such a project is only successful if you keep careful records of all the steps that you followed in your journal. After you have defined the problem and set yourself a hypothesis to test you need to step wise designate the procedure that you will follow.

The procedure can be numbered step wise to make it easier for you to duplicate as often as you wish with a different set of variables. For instance you can use the hypothesis involving how fast an ice sculpture can melt with this set of steps. First form the ice sculpture with normal water, tap water or mineral water. Each of these can be a different experiment in the series.

Now place it outside the freezer to time how fast it melts. This is step two. You can place in indoors, outdoors, during the day and night as your variables. Then measure the temperature at the time you placed it outside. This would be step three. And of course record all the data that you collect in your journal as the last step of the experiment procedure. Fairly easy science project to do and will have excellent data.

The setting up of your experiments correctly will help you conduct proper experiments as part of your science fair project. The designing of a good experiment depends on three main parts – the problem, the hypothesis, and the process that you test the hypothesis with.

The problem is essentially any question that you wish to find a definite answer for. Now if we deal with the problem of how fast an ice sculpture will melt at a garden party we have a fixed set of variables to deal with. Some of these will be the purity of the water that is used to make the ice, the temperature in the garden at the time of day the party will be held, the air pressure and sea level affecting the place, etc.

Now factor in all these variables and make a clearly defined hypothesis such as “How long will it take an ice sculpture of 20 pounds weight take to melt in the garden in the evening if it is made of tap water in a place that is 354 feet above sea level.” Now you can go about the actual experiment of developing the ice sculpture and seeing how long it took to melt.

Record all the steps along the way in a journal. You can even get a line graph of how fast one sculpture melted in the day and how much longer it took a similar sculpture to melt at night. Endless variations can be part of the science fair project.

When you do any science project you are in effect making a series of science experiments to define and prove a hypothesis. In this series of experiments that you do you will deal with a number of variables. Simply put a variable is something that changes its value during the process of the experiment.

However things are not quite as simple in a experiment so we will define a number of variables.  Essentially there are four different types of variables. The first would be the Independent variable. This is something that is changed during the conduct of the experiment. The next one would be the Dependent variable. This would be something that responds to the Independent variable during the experiment.

Next we have the Constant Variable. As the name suggests this is something that is kept the same throughout the series of experiments that you conduct. And then there is the Control. This is not exactly a variable but a similar test where the independent variable is left unchanged to provide a comparison to the remaining experiments. Think of it as a kind of guage to measure all the other experiments against.

As you can see defining the variables in your science fair project can make all the difference to your hypothesis. So be careful how you proceed with your records.