Should you chose to do a science project which includes the responses of an animal you will have to bear in mind safety rules for both the animal involved and yourself. It is a big responsibility to care for an animal whom you are involving in a science project.

The two main components that you have to look after for the animal are housing and food. The place you keep the animal should be safe and comfortable for the animal. Of course the size of the animal will determine the actual location you can house it in. You may need to look into fences or cages as well.

The animal should also be provided with adequate and appropriate food as per its needs. Some animals need special food which can not be obtained easily at the local supermarket. So you may want to look into buying food supplies from specialized stores before you get the animal.

At any point of time if you feel that the animal is unhealthy, you must immediately contact a vet. Your science experiment must also not be inhumane to the animal.  Handling animals can take a lot of effort as those of you with pets would already know. Actually conducting an experiment with them can be even more taxing.

Any science project that you get involved with is bound to have some level of experimentation. An experiment by definition will have some expected and some unexpected results. It is important to ensure that you stay safe when you conduct your experiments.

Three things that contribute to the safety of the experiment would be the location you pick to conduct the experiment, the nature of the experiment and the safety gear you use. It never hurts to have a good supervisor monitoring your efforts as well.

Before you begin any experiment it is a good idea to go through any possibilities of things that may go wrong. Also have an emergency plan in place so that if something does go wrong you know exactly what you need to do. Don’t panic and seek out help immediately.

If you are not sure about how a specific experiment is likely to end up, its a good idea to have a teacher, or mentor present when you handle the experiment. Any potentially dangerous element in the experiment such as fire, electricity, a laser, or chemicals must be handled with great care. Remember you are striving to make a science project, not end up as one yourself for the local hospital.

The facts support the belief that robotic surgery is safer than normal surgery. Sustained science experiments have made it possible for a robotic aides surgery to be less invasive and far more effective than regular surgery. So what is robotic surgery and how is it different from regular surgery?

Unlike the image that comes to mind, a robot does not actually perform the surgery on a human being. Rather it is a human doctor who is aided by a high precision robot to complete the surgical procedure. This makes it possible for the surgery to gain the expertise of the doctor and the steady hands of a robot.

The robotic surgical system which is most commonly used is the Da Vinci Surgical system. This involves a simple to use robotic interface for the doctor, good imaging systems with minute cameras which allow the doctor to see what he is doing in the operation and an instant feedback system on the condition of the patient on the operating table.

The truth of robotic surgery is that a human and a robot work together to give the patient the best treatment possible. It is the culmination of years of research and many science experiments that this medical system represents. It is also what the future promises to hold.

For a number of years the denizens of Earth have hoped to contact creatures living on other worlds. Many science projects have been based on contacting alien life form, and yet if there truly are other life forms out there, will they be able to understand our message?

After all a simple sentence like  “Are you out there?” is not likely to be understood even by humans who do not speak the English language. The language barrier can quite often prevent human beings from communicating with each other.  So how do you expect an alien life form to make sense of the sounds that it hears.

In fact how can you be sure that the alien life form even has the the ability to hear? Can you be sure that the alien will also develop all the five senses that human beings use to perceive the world around us? They may have a couple of abilities more or less than us.

That is why even designing a simple message to beam out into space for possible contact with aliens can be quite a difficult task. It needs to be easy to pick up, and self explanatory. Does this sound like a science project that you would be interested in?

At first the snake and a rescue worker do not seem to have anything at all in common, but if you consider an interesting science project at the Georgia Institute of Technology you see how the reptile could inspire the building of a robotic rescue worker.

A group of mechanical engineers at the university have been studying the locomotion of a snake so as to produce it in a robot. The kind of robot that they have in mind will be better than a human rescue worker as it will be able to cling to a surface like the side of a wall.

What’s more the robot will also be fitted with equipment which allows it to find victims buried in rubble in the rescue operation with ease. The design is great in theory but the practical construction of this reptile inspired robotic rescue worker has been giving the research team some tough times.

The texture of the snake and the ground it moves on is what they are trying to replicate in what they termed the “Snakebot.” While the science project is no where near complete the research done so far does not make the finished product seem very unrealistic.

The global terrorism acts that have caused such pain and devastation have been possible due to suicide bombers. However if this science project is to be believed suicide bombing is not limited to the human race, in fact the insect kingdom claims its own suicide bomber ant.

At the University of Leuven in Belgium researcher John Billen has been making a study of the southeast Asian carpenter ant which is known as Camponotus cylindricus. This little creature can turn into a suicide bomber to kill enemies of the ant colony.

The ant actually explodes sacs of venom when it is threatened covering the enemy with a sticky and toxic secretion. The explosion is triggered when the pressure on the glands placed under the length of the body is increased by the abdominal muscles. The explosion brings out the poison. This coating of toxins is usually enough to stall any enemy of the ant colony.

However the exploding of the venom sacs is a last resort of the ant as per the researcher doing the science project. The insect will first defend itself by biting the enemy. The bite will pass on a poisonous cocktail of aromatic hydrocarbons. If that does not work the ant will then pump its abdominal muscles to cause the sacs to explode ending its own life and saving its colony.

A crystal is a solid and as glass is made from crystalline quartz one would believe that it was a solid. As per scientific terms a solid must have its building blocks arranged in a three dimensional space. That means that the atoms, ions or molecules which make up the solid need to be arranged in a regular pattern.

The trouble with glass is that it is made by heating a mixture of quartz, soda and chalk the melting point of more than 1,100 degree Celsius. This means that even after it cools down the building blocks stay in a amorphous, non crystalline state.

It is only in liquids that the atoms, ions and molecules are found in an amorphous state. So this irregular distribution of the building blocks of glass show that it is actually a frozen liquid. At least in terms of scientific definition based on the arrangement of its molecules.

So then why is it called Crystal Glass? This is basically a misnomer as the glass is blown with lead oxide, zinc oxide or barium oxide in order to increase its refractive index. This gives the glass blown with such an additive a sparkle like a regular crystal, but it is still a frozen liquid as far as science is concerned.

Terraforming is a science fiction fantasy wherein the climate and environment of a distant planet is manipulated by human beings to become more like their home planet Earth. If the latest science project that NASA has undertaken is anything to set store by, this science fiction fantasy may too become a reality.

NASA is creating an extreme environment test chamber. Here it hopes to replicate the surface conditions of Venus. The high temperatures, pressure and excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are all to be reproduced. they main reason they are doing it is to help build more durable inter space vehicles and crafts.

The last spacecraft that was sent to Venus did not survive beyond two hours in the extreme hostile environment. The chamber is also to be used to conduct climate modifying experiments. These may answer worrying questions about our own globally changing climate.

It may not have the answer to global warming, but it may point us in a direction where we can do something to fix the weather. It is best that first we learn to deal with the climate of our own planet before we set out on as ambitious a science project as terraforming.

It may sound like a science fiction project, but the technology already exists. The simple blood test can actually tell you your biological age within a decade. What is more based on life expectancy factors it can even predict just how long you have to live.

It seems that our DNA has something called telomeres at the ends of the chromosomes. It has been established by scientists that these telomeres tend to shorten as we age. So they believe that by measuring the length of these telomeres it may be possible to not only tell what the person’s age is but also when the person will die.

This can be a bit complicated because biological age is not always the same as chronological age. Two people may be 35 years old and that is their chronological age. However one may lead and active and healthy life while the other may smoke too much, drink a lot and eat unhealthy junk food regularly.

In this case the healthier person is likely to have a much lower biological age and thus live longer. Critics say that the blood test will not be accurately able to tell the biological age of a person as different factors involved in aging a person are involved. It would make an interesting albeit morbid science project to see just how accurately the test can foretell lifespans.

Astronomy projects may not be the most exciting but they can occasionally throw up some surprisingly fun facts. In a two star system planets can end up being tossed from one star to the other  a number of times before they finally get ejected out of the system.

This interplanetary game of ping pong can result in very disruptive orbits that interfere with other planet orbits as well. Such two star systems are thus usually not too stable an environment for life to be sustained in them.

After all the existence of life depends on evolution and with the temperature, gravity and atmospheric pressure changing as often as they do on such planets it is hardly a wonder that life as we know it would not exist in such conditions.

That should not lead to disappointment for those of you hoping to meet ET in your lifetime. There are still a number of viable planets in the universe where carbon life forms similar to ours could have evolved. The question now is how and when are we going to establish contact.

Hunting for the alien life forms is an ongoing science project with professionals and amateurs just as easily involved in the act. Who knows the next big spaceship from outer space could be spotted by a kid out in the yard doing an astronomy project!