I’m in high school so my project needs to be, you know, high-schooly. None of that elementary stuff. Now, the fair is about 3 days away, so I need an experiment that can be done in under 1 day and a half. I know it looks like I was procrastinating, but I honestly thought it was next week. Please help!!!!!!!!
Oh, um, please nothing that blows up or anything. That happened last year and I was disqualified…Oh, and please the objects used need to be simple, nothing HUGE or expensive cuz I’m in Egypt and we don’t have everything other countries have.

A great project that I did in highschool (and it went over pretty well) was electroplating. Don’t get scared by the idea — it’s really REALLY simple to set up and do, as long as you find some instructions to get you started.

If you have access to the chemistry lab materials, there’s a number of really sweet projects you can do too. I’d suggest googling for "elephant toothpaste" and look on youtube for "potassium chlorate gummy bear". Definitely crowd pleasers.

WARNINGS: Okay, covering my ass here. Each of these labs should be demonstrated with the assistance of a competent adult, if not a chemistry teacher. Elephant toothpaste requires 30% Hydrogen Peroxide which is VERY DANGEROUS to handle. Always point beakers and tubes away from people when performing these experiments!

Bear with me if my post seems – apparently at times – irrelevant, but the description may be very relevant & refreshing of how The Interplay of Objectivity & Subjectivity revealing the dynamic interactions in our thinking processes – hence awareness & behavior

Here some background :

- I’d like to suggest using the term "exploratory experimentation" instead of "therapia in the multiplex" .

- This is Goethe’s approach of understanding our internal / external world. Not the color itself I’m interested here – but its Metaphor & phylosophy (now I understand why Goethe himself was the only one regard his Theory of Colors is his Best accomplisment) :

"Newton’s and Goethe’s respective approaches to color illustrate two very different approaches to experimental research. We call them theory-oriented and exploratory experimentation. Theory-oriented experimentation is often regarded as the only relevant kind: It corresponds roughly to the "standard" view in the philosophy of science that experiments are designed with previously formulated theories in mind and serve primarily to test or demonstrate them. Such a view was stated forcefully by Karl Popper, who wrote, "The theoretician puts certain definite questions to the experimenter, and the latter, by his experiments, tries to elicit a decisive answer to these questions, and to no others. . . . Theory dominates the experimental work from its initial planning up to the finishing touches in the laboratory."8 According to this view, it makes sense to perform an isolated experiment, and in particular an experimentum crucis, designed to judge between competing hypotheses. Newton largely followed such an approach in his experiments on color.

By contrast, exploratory experimentation has been relatively neglected by historians and philosophers of science. Its defining characteristic is the systematic and extensive variation of experimental conditions to discover which of them influence or are necessary to the phenomena under study. The focus is less on the connection between isolated experiments and an overarching theory, and more on the links among related experiments. Exploratory experimentation aims to open up the full variety and complexity of a field, and simultaneously to develop new concepts and categories that allow a basic ordering of that multiplicity. Exploratory experimentation typically comes to the fore in situations in which no well-formed conceptual framework for the phenomena being investigated is yet available; instead, experiments and concepts codevelop, reinforcing or weakening each other in concert.

Exploratory experimentation often results in the establishment of a hierarchy within a realm of phenomena. At the pinnacle are those phenomena–Goethe calls them primordial–that involve only the essential conditions and that are therefore attributed a special status. All other effects can be deduced or explained from those elementary ones by progressively complicating the experimental arrangement and adding new conditions. The connection between a particular effect and an elementary phenomenon is revealed by establishing a chain of intermediate effects. In his methodological essay The Experiment as Mediator Between Object and Subject,9 Goethe described the result of such an approach as a "series of experiments that border on one another closely and touch each other directly; and which indeed, if one knows them all exactly and surveys them, constitute as it were a single experiment. . . ." He regarded this care to connect the "closest to the closest" as an experimental analog of mathematical deduction, which "on account of its deliberateness and purity reveals every leap into assertion." In that context, isolated experiments are not very informative, let alone demonstrative, as they well might be in theory-oriented work. The difference is nicely illustrated by the exchange between Newton and an early critic, the Liège Jesuit Anthony Lucas, who brought forward many new experiments (including variations of Newton’s own), which he claimed could not be accounted for by Newton’s theory. Newton’s response was to insist that one "try only the experimentum crucis [Opticks, book 1, part 1, experiment 6]," for "where one will do, what need of many?"10 "

By : http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-55/iss-7/p43.html

- Connections – The Trigger Effect (Connections was a ten-episode documentary television series created and narrated by science historian James Burke) : Again, not science per se, but focus on how we think & act (individually & collectively) that making our World as it has been & will be

Sources :

http://www.palmersguide.com/jamesburke/billotto_con1.html

Hope you all enjoy

Cheers

are you trying to say that scientists seeking to prove their theories.. set in motion experiements that proves these theories rather than getting fair objective results?….

I cant seem to find a science fair project with aby worth that will get me a good grade. I need help getting a fast, easy and affordable project idea and I need it quickly. Can any one give me some ideas worth a good grade and worth some place between 1-3. It has to be physics related and something not too easy that an elementary student or middle school student does. I am in high school and I need a high school level experiment. Please can someone help me?

I liked when we made potato launches, but that was something we did as a class in 8th grade, not really science fair stuff.

Why not something on solar power, how it works, cost of a strip, likely locations to help maximize a typical home savings for their powerbill through the use of solar panels? Granted this will vary by location on the globe.

edit: also please keep in mind anything easy will not net you a top 3 spot at a science fair. you will need to put massive thought to be competitive, maybe something on water power and hydro-dynamics.