Think of a science fair exhibition and you can see a number of working models and some three dimensional models all lined up for the judges. However it is not the size of you model that will make it an award winner. When you make a science project you are putting some scientific principle to use.

You model is based on some basic facts which are irrefutable. These facts or scientific principles is what the judges hope to hear you explain when you present the model to them. If you do not know what makes your model work, it means that even though you have built it, your knowledge is incomplete.

If you are making a parachute to bring down some thing safely from the top floor of a building you need to understand a few principles including that of gravity. Other terms that you need to understand will include things like air resistance, drag, load, and surface area.

Take a look at the science project here if you are interested in making a parachute. This may help you understand better why a sky diver lands softly on the ground with the help of a parachute, while without one he would have  a hard fall. These are the facts that your judges as the science fair exhibition expect you to bring out along with th eworking model of a parachute.

Your science teacher may ask you to make a science project based on the scientific method. What does this involve? Essentially the scientific method is the basis of all scientific findings. It ensures that the facts that are documented are common and universal. How does it do that?

It is based on the following steps. First you make a hypothesis, this is like a guess. Let’s take a simple example like checking if something floats in water or does not. So if you make the hypothesis that a brick floats on water it will be wrong. How do you prove that the guess was wrong? You see that when you place the brick in the water it sinks.

This is called observation. Each time you place that brick or any other brick in water it will sink. The number of times you test this will give you your data. Once you have collected all the data you can make a conclusion. In this case the conclusion will be that a brick does not float on water, it sinks.

And that in a nutshell is the scientific method.  You make a hypothesis, then you make observations, collect data and then draw a conclusion based on the facts you have collected. If you are looking for ideas on projects that will involve using the scientific method, you will get plenty of them here. Just pick up the one which you find most interesting and get to work on your science project.

If you are interested in space travel, and it would be difficult not to be, you may be interested in learning about Solar Sails. These are made from flimsy material but are powered by sunlight. They have been tested and used on robotic space probes which travel out in to space on a space shuttle.

These robotic probes float gently out in space propelled by the solar energy which their sails harness and use as power. Wouldn’t it be great to harness the solar energy in a science project? Don’t think the project is beyond you. The basic principle is very simple to understand and to use.

Essentially you are converting the energy of the sun into another form. For instance if you make a solar cooker, you are converting solar energy into heat to cook food. Or if you are using solar energy to run a solar calculator, you are converting the solar energy into electrical energy which powers the working of the calculator.

The initial solar energy based devises were dependent on the presence of a shining sun to power them. Now with solar cells that can store the energy captures much like batteries these devices are easier to run. They are also much more reliable than the initial ones which would stop working the minute the sun went behind a cloud.  Get more science project ideas here. I’m sure you will find working with solar energy very interesting and entertaining.

Can a brightly colored packet of M&Ms become the base of a science project? Yes it can, because such candy is made from food colors and dyes. The yellow, red, and green candy all have been made by using different food dyes. These edible dyes are different from the paints that you use for coloring, but the principle is the same. You are painting the food.

In fact many artificial food colors are considered unhealthy. This is one more reason why eating too much colored candy may be bad for you. The sugar levels in such food are high too. They may give you a short lived energy boost, but over all they are bad for your metabolism. In fact some food dyes are even thought to be carcinogenic.

“Carcinogenic” means that these could cause cancer. However there is no need to panic just because you ate a packet or two of M&Ms this week. These dyes are harmful only if eaten in large quantities. As they are difficult for the human body to digest and takes time for them to be pushed out of the system.

Do you think I’m making all this up to scare you off candy? Not really. Dyes can be studied very easily. In fact there are some simple experiments that you can conduct at home using your packet of colored candy.  Learn more about Candy and Chromatography here. Maybe this will help you understand the chemicals that we put into our body are not always healthy.

What is Air Pressure and how can you use it in a science project? As you know air is all around us. It tends to push against us at a standard pressure. This is measured as 14.7 psi. However what happens when the air pressure around us is disturbed?

Ever feel the wind blowing? That is a direct result of the air pressure getting disturbed. However the wind can not be controlled in a science project. So let us pick an easier test for air pressure. All kinds of motion is possible to manipulate if you decide to meddle with the pockets of air pressure around you.

For instance if you blow under a balloon it will rise and float away. This happens because the pocket of air pressure under it is disturbed. So once the balloon moves and the effect of your blowing ends it will float down to its new location and sit there till some thing else disturbs the air pressure around it.

A balloon is light and so is easily influenced with the slightest change of air pressure, but how about water? Can air pressure effects be tested on water? Of course they can. In fact there is one trick here which magicians use in their show. It is not really magic but the science of air pressure at work. Here’s a whole list of experiments based on air pressure for you to try out. Using stuff like bottles, cans and balloons you can test the air pressure in the atmosphere around you.

Science is at  work all around us. To understand how these scientific principles work all we need to do is take a better look at things around us. Shiny spoons reflect light. This can teach us about the nature of light. If we look at a dull spoon the light does not get reflected that well. This teaches us about the nature of metal.

Mirrors reflect images if there is light in the room. If it is dark the same mirror becomes a playground of dark shadows. This teaches us that light is needed to reflect images in a mirror. In fact the image that we see in the mirror is nothing more than light waves reflected back at us from our body.

Sunlight is great for all kinds of experiments. Ever try lighting a pile of straw with a magnifying glass? If you don’t hold the magnifying glass at the right angle you can spend the full day trying to get a spark going and not get anything. There is science hiding in that as well.

Artificial light is the kind that lights up the insides of our homes. Of course it is not limited to being inside buildings, there are artificial light street lights out on the road as well. These lights are of many different kinds and each uses different scientific principles in generating light.  Besides light there are emissions of many other kinds in our universe. Check out a few more details here.

The food that we eat is actually a whole chemical experiment on its own. The kitchen can be a great chemistry lab for those interested in some science projects. Think about it. What is a chemical reaction all about? It is about taking two things and adding some external energy to make it a whole new thing.

And what does a chef do? He takes a number of different ingredients and adds some heat to them and cooks up a new dish. You can even do a whole range of experiments with temperature as well. How soon does milk boil? Does it boil in the same time that water boils? What about coffee? Does adding coffee to milk before boiling make it boil sooner or later?

Then we can do some experiments with mixing things. Some things get easily dissolved. Such as sugar teaspoons in milk. Then there are others that don’t dissolve, but we mix together anyway to make suspensions. Say blending tomato and adding it to water to make soup. If you need more ideas check out this article here.

The food that we eat has a whole lot of science hidden it in. You can look at the ingredients of the humble kitchen shelf with a whole new attitude. There is a whole pile of fun chemistry experiments just waiting to be done there. Just make sure that you warn your mom before you move into the kitchen

Last time I spoke about how eggs and sugar can be used in science projects.  This time we talk about other possible ingredients that you can get off the kitchen shelf and use in your experiments. One fun experiment involves using yeast. Considering that it is essential in making bread, understanding how it works would also be fun.

Essentially the yeast works on the gluten in the flour. You can try different types of flour with various amounts of yeast. See which type rises fastest. Check what the commercial bakeries use. Ask what that aunt of yours who loves baking bread uses. There is a whole lot of fun to be had in making different shapes as you bake the bread as well.

You can learn about oxidization using fruits. In fact an apple is a great fruit for such experiments. Cut up an apple into four pieces. Just leave one side open to the air. Seal up one of the other ones with foil. Use a few drops of lemon juice on the third. And wrap up the last piece in cling film. Then examine all the pieces after an hour or two. The results will be amazing.

The cabbage is a great vegetable to learn about acids and bases. Try out the experiments here to learn about acids and bases in a way that you never imagined before.  It will make the common place ingridients such as vinegar, cabbage juice and water seem really exciting. Don’t think that’s possible? Just check it out.

Did you know it was possible to come up with a dozen different science projects using the food in the kitchen? I am not kidding. Take the humble egg for instance. You can use it in so many ways. I’m not talking about cooking it boiled, scrambled or poached. I am talking about science experiments that you can conduct with it.

How about baking a cake with eggs and one without. The difference in the texture would give you a good idea about why the egg is an essential ingredient. You could see how using merely the egg white in a souffle makes it rise better. You could even think up of other ingredients that you can use as a substitute for your friend who is allergic to eggs.

You can use it as a fragile package that you drop from a hight in different types of material. Try using different material to see which serves the purpose of protection best. I got an email once talking about how an egg was fried using two mobile phones. As you can see there is a whole lot of experimentation that you can do with just one small egg.

Sugar is another good food to use. You can see how it makes candy, or how you can caramalyze it. How the taste changes and the way caramalyzed sugar changes the color of the food it is cooked wth. Similarly there are a number of other foods that you can use to make a science project interesting. Just think up of interesting combinations.

Science is at work all around us. The various branches of science that you can use for a science experiment are Biology, Physics, and Chemistry. Biology is the science of the living things. The subject is further demarcated into Zoology or the study of animals. You can derive that from the use of the word “zoo” in the name of the science branch.

Botany or the study of plants is the other branch of Biology. You can base your science project on what you observed about plants and animals around you. This would mean that you used Biology as the base of your project. Biologists are also responsible for cutting edge technology such as genetically modified plants and animal clones. Remember the sheep Dolly?

With Chemistry you have two main branches. Organic Chemistry which deals with carbon based chemical compounds and Inorganic Chemistry which deals with all other sorts of chemical compounds. However my favorite is Physics. There are many different branches in Physics. If you study the movement of heavenly bodies in the starry sky above it is Astrophysics.

If you study tiny molecules and atoms which are so small that they cant be seen by the naked eye, you are studying Atomic Physics. As you can see the scope of the subject is really vast from the minuscule to the magnificent. From pure theory to pure practical, you can do a lot with the many sub branches of Physics. Here’s one example that you can use as a science project.