A hypothesis is crucial to the scientific process. If you are making a science fair project following the scientific method you will need a well defined and clear hypothesis to test. Here we learn how to take all possible factors into consideration in a hypothesis that you form for your science experiment.

To make a guess you do not need any information at all but to define a hypothesis you need to do some research. Take for instance a simple problem such as how fast will an ice sculpture melt once it has been removed from the freezer. There are a number of factors that you need to consider before you make a guess for the time frame.

First will be the size of the ice involved. A smaller sculpture will melt faster than a larger one. Then you need to consider the temperature in the room that the ice sculpture has been kept. Naturally if the room is air cooled the ice sculpture will last longer than if its a garden party and it has been placed outdoors in the summer.

Another factor to consider is if the ice sculpture is made out of plain tap water or if it has some special chemicals added to it which may delay the melting time involved. You can even consider the effect of the elevation from the sea in your hypothesis. So you can see that clearly defining the hypothesis for your science project is a very important part of a successful experiment.

When you get down to working on a science fair project you are encouraged to start using the scientific method. The first part of the scientific method is to form a hypothesis. So what exactly is a hypothesis? Is it just a guess that you make or is there more to it? Let’s take a look.

A hypothesis is considered an educated guess. When you take a guess you have no clue about what you are facing, but when you make an educated guess you can be making a hypothesis. For instance if some one shows you a gift wrapped paper box and asks you what is inside you take a wild guess. If you know the person who is giving the gift and to whom he’s giving it you may be taking an educated guess and may get it right.

So your science fair project can be based on an educated guess such as the one above based on your knowledge of some facts. For instance if you take a cube of ice out of the freezer and place it outside it will melt. That’s a fact, but how soon will it melt? Guessing the time is a hypothesis you make. Will it be 30 minutes or more. How will the temperature of the room delay or speed up the time. You get the idea for a good science experiment with this hypothesis.

A lot of thought needs to go into a science fair project if you intend to make it a winning one. Everything about the project needs to be planned and executed in a well thought out manner. The first thing you need to be sure of is that is is an eye catching topic. The judges are not interested in something that has been done a million times before.

So make the topic as unique as you can but make sure that it is not so off the grid that it is difficult for your to find research material for it. Now look at hot topics that are often in the news. During the time that Pluto lost its planet status a science fair project on the solar system would have been interesting.

Or for that matter during the Copenhagen environmental conference any renewable energy source related science project would have been a good idea. Now pick up a newspaper or go to google news and see what is hot in science right now. Then find a related topic with which you can build your science fair project. That’s how you pick that Science Fair project that stands out and says to the judges I am a winner.

One of the easiest science projects to do involves static electricity. The one that we will do here is a good activity for any parent to do with a pre school child. It is an activity that is safe and easy to conduct. Only trouble is that the kids love it so much that they want to do it all the time. And that can be pretty challenging for the parent.

Any how let’s see what we need to set up this fun science experiment. A lump of clay, a pencil, a string, a small piece of paper, a silk cloth, a cotton cloth and a comb. Now make a ball out of the lump of clay and stick the pencil into it so that it is slightly slanted but stays standing up. Now from the top end of the pencil tie the string and let it fall loose.

On the other end of the string fix a small piece of paper. the paper attached to the string should be able to move freely without hitting the pencil stem. Now take the comb and run it on the silk cloth for about thirty seconds. Now bring the comb close to the piece of paper. It will start dancing.

This action is caused due to static electricity. Now repeat the process but this time use the cotton cloth. Does the paper dance? Perhaps not as much as it did with the silk cloth. Use other materials you have and see how the paper reacts in this science project.

Starting work from scratch on a science fair project can be a daunting task. So instead start with something familiar that you enjoy like your hobby. Now you have a good starting point for your science project. No matter what your hobby is it can be the base of an interesting science project.

In case you enjoy gardening you can develop a science project based on growth of two seedlings. Take three seedlings of the same kind and plant them in three different kinds of soil. Now regularly monitor their growth and record the height of the seedlings in detail each week.

Observe which soil makes the plant grow best. Now analyze the chemical composition of the soil and figure out what part of the soil helps the plant. Of course this is the kind of project that will take a couple of months to do. So make sure that you start out the project way before the science fair entry is due.

If you are looking for something related to electronics you can take your pick from any number of interesting science projects. Do you like music? You can build a simple radio. There are science fair project kits which will give you all the know how and the materials that you need to do so.

Every year its the same story. You get going on a project and deliver it to the science fair. You watch as someone else gets a prize and you return home. The whole thing is repetitive and uninspiring for you, but it need not be. It is possible to learn a great deal from science fairs even if you do not get that coveted ribbon.

The fairs allow you the opportunity to learn about more science phenomena than what is supposed to be present in your textbooks.A whole world of knowledge opens up to you. You can take inspiration from a particular project and build it even better with your own ideas incorporated in it.

As you work on a particular subject you will learn even more about it. You learn about the laws that work consistently in the natural world. You learn about how to harness nature’s forces for your own purpose. You learn to organize your thoughts and actions as you follow the scientific method in your experimentation.

So there is a great deal more to the science fair than making a boring old project and watching some one else walk away with a prize. It can be a good time to brush up your knowledge about a number of things. You can read more about science projects here.

Science experiments can range from the elementary to the highly complicated. The best part about this variety is that there is some science project for every one to do. This one here is a simple experiment that even a three year old can do, with adult supervision of course.

What you will need are a glass jam jar, 50 ml of water, about a cup of sugar, a string and a pencil. We are going to make sugar crystals from these things. So to start with you need to heat the water. You can pop the water into the jam jar and bring it to a boil in the microwave.

While it is boiling cut some string and tie it to the pencil. You will need to measure the string so that it can hang right down to the bottom of the jam jar when the pencil is rested on the mouth of the jam jar. By now the water would be boiling so bring it out carefully from the microwave and set it down on your work space.

Now add the sugar and stir the water spoonful at a time. Make sure that the sugar dissolves before you add the next teaspoon. We are going to keep repeating this till the water is saturated and no more sugar can dissolve in it. Now place the pencil on the mouth of the jam jar with the string dipped in the sugar water.

Let is stand alone and undisturbed for a day. The next day you will find that the string is covered with crystals of sugar! Pretty cool isn’t it? Try out some more science projects from this website.

Just because we are carbon based we tend to believe that all lifeforms would be the same. It is not just ignorance which makes us assume this, it is also fear of the unknown. After all this is the model of life we know and so this is the one that we search for in the entire universe.

But what if it was not the only model of life? What if there was other life which was not based on evolution coming from water? What if it was based on silicon or some other element? Most scientists who debate the question feel that there is a possible secondary evolution based on ammonia which is not only possible but also probable.

So what would be different in life forms that evolved from ammonia? Well for starters the biochemistry would be different. As would be the chemical building blocks of life. The DNA strand would not be a double helix as the high pH content would split the two strands. So how would they store genetic data? Maybe they would evolve their own systems.

It is all speculative at this stage as far as we are concerned but it is also quite possible that some other form of life exists in the universe and we have passed them by just because we did not recognize them. Here is an interesting science project for you to try out.

In the not so distant future there may come a time when it is not possible for all human beings to live on Earth. The reasons for limiting the population such as plagues and diseases have been all but eliminated. So naturally the human population is growing faster than it has ever done in the history of the planet. So will we have to go hunt for another planet to live on?

The closest planet to the sun in the solar system is Mercury. It is so close to the sun that the heat has not allowed the planet to settle down into terra firma.  Venus is the second planet from the sun. It is hot and volatile. There is no possibility of landing on Venus within the limitations of our current technology.

Mars is kind of inhospitable to human beings right now but yes with a hundred thousand years at our disposal we may be able to shift to the planet. The remaining planets of the solar system aka Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and the dwarf planets in the ends are just too cold to sustain human life.

All in all we can not live on any of the other planets in our solar system. Plus we are yet to find a hospitable planet in any other solar system as well. So it would be prudent to get the human population under control and soon. Here’s a science project you can try out to hunt for a suitable planet.

The angry red planet in the telescope may not seem very hospitable right now. However it is the only other planet in the solar system which human beings may be able to relocate to. In fact here’s what the science project to make Mars a habitable planet would entail. Believe me it will take some doing.

First the atmosphere in Mars would have to be heated. This would be done by injecting carbon dioxide and initiating the greenhouse effect. Yes it would be a good thing on Mars. Next as pressure increased some self supporting life forms would have to be introduced on to the planet.

In about a 100 years the lichen and bacteria would have produced photosynthesis. In 200 years there would be moss and in 300 years you may even see a coniferous forest on Mars. Plant life would perk up the oxygen in the atmosphere but the levels would be low. It would take another hundred thousand years before there would be enough oxygen to support human life on the planet.

Of course due to the lack of water  in adequate amount on Mars most of the planet would still look like a desert somewhat akin to Siberia or the Australian Outback. Still you can always harvest water from the rings of Saturn. Of Course that would be yet another science project of some magnitude.