Do you like to build ground vehicles and air vehicles as science projects? Well then this Autonomous Vehicle Competition is right up your street. SparkFun is having its fourth annual Autonomous Vehicle Competition (AVC) on 16 June in Boulder, CO.

They do have a list of regulations for each category of vehicle and you may want to look into them if you plan to take part. The ground vehicles will need to go around 4 barrels to complete the race. The positions of the barrels will only be revealed on race day. So the vehicles you design will need to be flexible able to do any route that is presented to them.

As for the air vehicles, bad news for the helicopters. No quadcopters or helicopters allowed in the category. The air vehicle will be expected to go around the four exterior walls of the building in which the competition is being hosted. Wheel carriages are allowed for aircraft that don’t have their own wheels. Human assisted take-off  such as throwing a plane in the air for takeoff  is not considered autonomous.

If you meet all the requirements you will be able to qualify for one of the 50 spots reserved for potential competitors on race day.Nothing to beat a good race as the culmination of all your effort taken to build a vehicle as a science project!

The sun is the sole source of light and energy that allowed the human civilization to survive on our planet. However this hot ball of gases and fire is not all benevolent. In fact it can be quite the trouble maker when it comes to our high tech society.

In the 18th century a particularly strong solar storm affected the telegraph service on the planet. Operators actually disconnected their batteries and were able to function using the surge of electromagnetic power that the sun had provided!

Fortunately such a strong solar storm has not reoccurred in a century. So we were able to go high tech without much interference from the sun. Now however, with everything based on mobile and wireless technologies, a similar solar storm in this century may leave us in dire straights.

The truth is that the sun is not as stable a source of power as we would like to believe it is. It has its ups and downs, and yes it has the potential to knock out our civilization. There is little that we can do to stop it, but we can still try to be prepared for the worst that it can send us using our experience from countless science projects to help us along the way.

In the last post we decided to conduct an investigation using a specific objective. Then we gathered all the equipment and material that we would need to conduct this scientific investigation and now we do the actual recording of relevant data. This will help us measure the different variables that make up a part of our objective under study.

Remember it is this raw data that will give you a possible way to negate or prove that objective under consideration. So take all possible care to record this data as accurately as possible. Once the data has been collected you will need to write a report expounding just what you did and what you were able to prove.

The report must be as close to the process that you actually followed. Do not think of fabricating any part of the report as an experienced teacher will be able to catch you out instantly. Try be as honest to the actual experiment that you conducted in the report.

The Science Fair project is now ready for display. Take the highlights of your study and make a nice three fold display out of it. Make sure that you cover all stages of the scientific investigation in detail on the display board as not everyone is going to have the time to read your report on the project.

With physics based science fair projects a working model is the most popular way to win over a jury, however it is not your only option for a science fair entry. You can also organize a scientific investigation in such a manner that the study becomes your science fair project.Here’s what you will need to do.

Start with a valid objective. Define just what you intend to study in as many details and variables as you can possibly find. The more measurable details that you have in your objective the easier it will be to conduct your study with accuracy. So define the objective well.

After that is done make a list of all the things that you will need for your study. Special equipment aside make lists of basic supplies such as pencils, scales and erasers as well. It is quite frustrating to want to record some details to study later only to realize that your notebook is all used up!

Now you are all set to begin your study. Designate the time that you will be conducting the study. Some projects like the study of the moon phase, for instance, will require you to record your observations only at night. This could be a problem if your parents are not too keen on your staying up at odd hours like an owl. So pick your subject of scientific investigation carefully.

A balloon is always viewed as a fragile thing with a relatively short life. The mere thought that one could be fireproof seems ludicrous. However as you must know, with science the impossible is just a misguided experiment away. So here we have a tryst with a fireproof balloon.

For this science experiment you are going to need two balloons of the same size, a box of matches, a couple of  candles and a glass of water. Blow up the first balloon with air and keep it aside. The second balloon will be filled with the water from the glass and blown to the same proportion as the first balloon.

Now use the box of matches to light the two candles.  Fix them firmly on the ground and bring one balloon each above them. As the first balloon filled with only air comes in contact with the steady heat emitted by the candle it will burst. However the second balloon will not.

The balloon with the water in it seems to be fireproof. Why does this happen? Its simple if you apply the principles of science. The water in the second balloon absorbs the heat from the candle and does not allow the rubber to get overheated making the air inside the balloon expand continuously and burst. A simple and effective science experiment.

What started as a status symbol in the 1960s has become a 30 billion dollar market in this century. Developing new breeds of resilient flowers through genetic modification and science experiments is indeed a global business today. Successful breeding of a species of flowers can involve the elimination of many thousands of varieties.

The seasonal blooms that graced the garden have now been replaced by cut flowers from hot houses. You no longer have to wait for a specific season to buy a specific flower for you vase at home. The global flower markets have ensured that you can get just about any bloom that your heart desires in any month you want it, as long as you can pay the right price for it.

More than half of the world’s cultivated hot house roses come from northern Germany near Hamburg. Flowers grown in the hot houses of Kenya will survive 2 weeks as they are transported and sold in the wholesale markets of Europe. And now China has decided to enter the flower market with the aim of taking over the sales in the Asian segment of the flower market.

In monetary figures the global flower market is larger than the global music industry. The constant research to improve quality offers plenty of opportunity in the field. So you may just want to try your hand at a science project based on glowing flowers.

Each species on our planet has its own unique survival techniques. A number of science research projects have proved that these techniques are often inborn. Some of them are learned behavior that the growing organism picks up but more often than not, survival is embedded in its genes.

Take for instance the cooperation of the of the Meerkats of Africa. These distant cousins of the raccoon are no more than 30 cm tall. They live in groups in underground tunnels. However they show major traits of cooperation. When the group comes out of the tunnels to forage for food one member stands on sentry duty. While the others eat this sentry keeps an eye out for danger in the area.

The sentry is usually on higher ground such as a rock or a tree top. It may seem that the Meerkat on sentry duty is more vulnerable than the rest of its group close to the ground, but his warning cry help save more members of the group. At the same time the sentry is amongst the first to jump to safety after giving the warning cry. So its behavior of cooperation is not always totally altruistic.

In a similar manner human groups also enlist cooperation for survival. It may not be as clearly evident in our lives today as it was in the lives of the cave men ages ago, but the trait has ensured our survival. Maybe an interesting science project would be to list the ways human society still cooperates, but uses money to make it more of a transaction rather than a helpful action.

That stubborn fat that refuses to budge no matter how hard you try to lose weight was recently the object of a scientific study. In this science project conducted by a collaboration of Indian and Australian researchers a new fat busting method was experimented with.

The idea was to test if fat would burn faster if it was moved to a location of the body that was more active. So fat tissues of white rats were taken from their less active body regions and transplanted on the chest and thighs to increase the glucose insulin based metabolism.

Sure enough the glucose insulin rates more than doubled after the transplant of fat in the rates. This meant that the fat was being metabolized twice as fast as before leading to faster reduction of the fat. Now the researchers claim that a similar technique would allow human beings to treat not just obesity but also diabetes.

Of course the entire science project is in a very nascent stage as of now and it will be years before the process can be tested on a human being. However the idea for a revolutionary new fat loss technique may just have been planted in many more fertile researcher brains. Who knows what new way to burn fat the future will bring?

Human activities have been affecting the climate. The degree to which they do so have been argued about by various researchers based on their science project findings. There have been many recorded instances where pollution has caused harm to the ecosystem, and now it seems that air pollution may cost us the rainy season.

Some researchers at Princeton University published a paper in the September 2011 edition of Science. The paper recorded a 5% reduction in rainfall during the monsoon season in India over the last five decades. As per the scientists it was the result of aerosols formed by wood burning and car emissions that were to blame for this drastic climate pattern change.

Aerosols are fine particles suspended in the air which tend to reflect sunlight back into outer space. This reduces the heat of the sun and disrupts the process which would bring rain to the Indian subcontinent region. However just how the human activity affects the monsoons is not discussed.

There have been other studies which have said that the air pollution is responsible for increasing the intensity of the rainfall during the monsoon season. It is difficult to tell which study to believe at this stage, but one thing all these science projects do prove is that the human beings are irrevocably changing the climate.

What can two such different processes possibly have in common?One in the laboratory, the other in the kitchen. If you think about it you will agree that conducting a science experiment is rather like following a food recipe.

Both include step by step directions on how to proceed and both can turn into perfect disasters if you ignore some key instructions. Also both can be tweaked to get slightly different results from the original.

At the same time you can be literally playing with fire if you mess up with either. The key to a good outcome in either an experiment or a recipe is the preparation time that you spend on them before you actually get down to doing the deed.

Just as it helps speed up the cooking process if you wash and chop your ingredients in advance, it can speed up your experiment process if you have all the material required lined up and easily available to you.

To master a recipe you need to cook it repeatedly, in the same manner most scientific norms advice that any science experiment should provide the same outcome at least three times for it to be considered stable.

So when you get down to the basics you will agree that any science experiment you conduct can actually be treated at par with a new recipe that you want to try out.