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.

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.