Science experiment need ideas/help.

[Gunther_mag_user]

I have a 49% in my science class. I need to get a semester science project done. I need some Ideas! Something with plants is good, or anything that doesn't involve humans.

ALL help is greatly appreciated, and if you help me pass this class I'll love you forever.

[MoeMag]

49% that’s rough :eek:

I’m up for helping a fellow magger.

At least let us know what grade you are in or some background... That way I don’t drop the calculus bomb on a 4th grade class. :D

[Gunther_mag_user]

Oh man forgot to add that! Science 2 ala 10th grade science. It can be on any topic.

[MoeMag]

hmm...
any "science"
chem, phys, astronomy, biology plant or animal, or geology?

What has been discussed in class? Any particular area the instructor likes (looking for brownie points)?

[Gunther_mag_user]

hmm...
any "science"
chem, phys, astronomy, biology plant or animal, or geology?

What has been discussed in class? Any particular area the instructor likes (looking for brownie points)?
He really likes when people work with plants because there is small room for error. We have been covering genetics lately, but the project about anything. I was considering How much power a battery holds and what gives the most bang for your buck, but plants are what he really likes. I would like to do something on motion or energy or plants beause I know all that stuff.

Edit: chemisty is good too.

[MoeMag]

So the guy likes plants, you like energy...

Perfect!
Photosynthesis :clap:

The great thing about that topic is that it is really versatile. You can do something really simple… grow a plant in light, and a plant in dark. You can investigate how a plant reacts to light, IE moved toward a light source. Rapid plant movement, Venus flytrap (really cool). Move onto some more advanced things like analyzing the Photosynthesis process on a chemical level (genetic level is included in this one)… Electron Transfer Chain, Krebs cycle. You could even figure out how much power a plant produces! COOL STUFF :headbang:

One project I really have wanted to do, in relation to the possibility of terra forming Mars, is growing a plant in a oxygen less, CO2 rich environment. (Easy with paintball CO2 tanks)

Google some of those ideas see what you think. I think if you put some real work into any of those ideas you could do a project that would knock his socks off.

On a side note, I just thought of this while eating dinner...
If you want to do something that is seemingly boring but actually truly is really cool, and would blow away a high school science class…look into PI, you know 3.14159265358979323846..., the circle constant. The history behind it is incredible; in fact one of the best books I have ever read is called Pi. Okay so it is math, but good science is entirely based upon math so it is completely valid.

Hope this helps, I will keep an eye on this thread.
:cheers:

[Pacifist_Farmer]

Time elapsed photos of similar plants grown in different conditions (light sources, Soils, water levels).

[Skittle]

plants always move toward light so u can see grass move like \ | / during the day. so videotaping plants would be cool.

[tropical_fishy]

Guys, it is TENTH grade, not FOURTH grade. Most people can tell yuo that plants prefer light. It's common knowledge. I don't have time to really give you any ideas, because I have to run out for a bit in a few minutes, but you really should be asking a bigger question than, "do plants move towards sunlight?" Maybe look into xylem and phloem, or the process of photosynthesis. You don't have to break new ground, but your project should focus on more than, "look at the flowers face the sun! Oh, and for my project, I learned that plants don't grow in the dark. Who woulda figured."

[Skittle]

Guys, it is TENTH grade, not FOURTH grade. Most people can tell yuo that plants prefer light. It's common knowledge. I don't have time to really give you any ideas, because I have to run out for a bit in a few minutes, but you really should be asking a bigger question than, "do plants move towards sunlight?" Maybe look into xylem and phloem, or <i> the process of photosynthesis</i>. You don't have to break new ground, but your project should focus on more than, "look at the flowers face the sun! Oh, and for my project, I learned that plants don't grow in the dark. Who woulda figured."

Noone asked <i>if</i> they moved towards the sunlight. Photosynthesis is the subject, so to show how plants gather energy by facing the sun would be a good way to show how efficent plants are. Sense they dont have sunlight 24hrs a day, it's actually pretty cool how they move to face the sun to gather as much energy as they can. Not to mention that if his teacher likes plants, then actually filming the plants and the giving an explination of what is going isint a bad idea.

[topazpaintball]

Guys, it is TENTH grade, not FOURTH grade. Most people can tell yuo that plants prefer light. It's common knowledge. I don't have time to really give you any ideas, because I have to run out for a bit in a few minutes, but you really should be asking a bigger question than, "do plants move towards sunlight?" Maybe look into xylem and phloem, or the process of photosynthesis. You don't have to break new ground, but your project should focus on more than, "look at the flowers face the sun! Oh, and for my project, I learned that plants don't grow in the dark. Who woulda figured."

Well, plants can germinate in the dark, they just don't form any green shoots. :p

Umm... I was gonna recommend a gauss gun or a micro rail gun, because those are always highly impressive, but I'm lost with plants.

[Pyroboy597]

Another cool thing, which wouldn't really make up a whole lab, is to demonstrate how a plant aborbs water by letting it sit in a vase full of Red food dye. That is always fun.

[Jonneh]

Maybe you could disprove evolution, start with the Second law of thermodynamics, then say the that earth can't possibly be 4+ billion years old.

[thE_mAd_Dr_shOck]

Not all good science is based on math. Most organic chemists would argue that statement (since not even kinetics can explain some reactions) as would many engineers. I can't even think of many great physics innnovations that didn't start out as simple thought experiments, first. Math has its flaws, some of which are huge (ie. statistical reliability and the null limit of the natural log.) In short, both math and science need each other.

But anyway, here'd be a good project for you: Grow a plant and take cuttings of it for cloning. Grow the clones and provide standard, nonvarialbe conditions with the exception of one (ie, one specific fertilizer component such as phosphorous or some crap like that). After growing the plants with these slight variations (don't forget your control!) remove an equal sized chunk from all of the plants at the same time of day, preferably high noon or whatever time the plants recieve the most sunlight. Immidately preform bomb calorimetry on each individual piece. Repeat.

From there you can tell how the variation effects the plant's production of sugars and go into the mechanism for the photoreaction and even some quantum theory (pigmentation, absorbance, absorbitivity, Beer's law and stuff). You could go two ways with this experiment; You could do something like a pure phos vs. pure nitrogen fertilizers or you could see which concentrations of just one component (like phosphorous) produce the best results. In using various concentrations you could do a graph and a linear regression for future predictions of a maximum effective dosage.

If you want to get more technical you can do some simple statistical analysis with confidence intervals. You could also work with "greening" chemicals and relate it all to beer's law and its deviations and flaws.

Anyway, good luck and I hope I helped.

[Cow hunter]

wind tunnel showing effects of aerodynamics. basically, a box made of glass/clear plastic (ends missing) A platform hanging from strings, and a ruler for measuring. Place a model car on platform and have a fan blow onto car, see how far back it moves. for some cool effects use some smoke/colored gas.

[tropical_fishy]

Well, plants can germinate in the dark, they just don't form any green shoots. :p

Umm... I was gonna recommend a gauss gun or a micro rail gun, because those are always highly impressive, but I'm lost with plants.


You know what I meant. I just think the experiment should pose a bigger question than, "where does my plant grow good?"

I think yuo could go places with the cloning idea. Just my $.02

[Gunther_mag_user]

Wow, thanks for all the responses! I apprecciate it!


Topaz: Just wondering, how would I emplement a guass gun? Magnet string to distance /speed? It would be mega cool if I could pull off an effective rail gun.

Pyro: Cool beans, Great Idea!

Moemag: the co2 enviroment sounds like it would be awesome. Just wondering, what kind of experiment could I apply pi to? How much energy a plant produces would blow him away, and I need to really nail this experiment.

Jonneh: I don't know anything at all about that, I'm looking for soemthing that I have some sort of background in. Great thought though!

Dr shock: That sounds way too advanced for me. We aren't really covering plants at the moment, but my teacher really likes them because the results will not lie. If I had some sort of resource about cloning that would be awesome, but I don't really want to attempt something that I have no knowledge of.

Pacifist: That is a good Idea, I could probably mix in that with some other Ideas.(Energy production for example.)

Skittle: I like your thinking, but I am looking for something a little more difficult. I don't really mind putting alot of work into a project(especially when my credit depends on it.)

Fishy: I agree 100%. I'll look into the cloning, but I don't know alot about that.


Thanks for the responses everyone! I aprecciate it, I really do. No one in my class was willing to help me or give me ideas :(.

[topazpaintball]

This (http://www.electronics-lab.com/projects/index.html) page has a lot of projects, ranging from basic to highly advanced.

http://www.electronics-lab.com/projects/science/017/index.html
is a coil gun easily made

http://www.geocities.com/physicsthings/microrailgu.htm
is a simple but functional rail gun

[Eagle]

ever seen the movie 'The Manhattan Project' with John Lithgow? :D

[Gunther_mag_user]

ever seen the movie 'The Manhattan Project' with John Lithgow? :D
Alas, no :(

[MoeMag]

Moemag: the co2 environment sounds like it would be awesome. Just wondering, what kind of experiment could I apply pi to? How much energy a plant produces would blow him away, and I need to really nail this experiment.


The co2 environment thing is something I have been tempted to do for a long time just to see what happens. I figure I could get a big glass pickle jar, mount some valves and gauges to the top, and run a co2 remote line to it. Co2 is heavier than air, so let the co2 displace the regular atmosphere out then seal it and let it sit like that. I would imagine you would have to replenish the co2 supply every once in a while. If you got really fancy you could get gas analyzers and find out how much oxygen the plant produces for a given time. Then you could figure out how to sustain a spacecrafts oxygen supply with plants using simple calculations :headbang:

The pi thing... well you could present your project with some humor by addressing a stupidly simply question and blowing out of the water...
-How to draw a circle
-How many pieces of pi does it take to go around a pi pan? 2pi! (6.28319)

Just stupid nerdy stuff like that. :bounce:

Then as far as the "how much power a plant produces"...
I vaguely remember reading about the chemicals that are produced in one of the chemical processes that plants do, as being measured in joules... I think. Anyway you will have to do some serious research to figure that one out.

[SpecialBlend2786]

I competed in 10th and 11th grade, got 1st place county wide both years and 2nd place Statewide my junior year.

hit me up on AIM/MSN/Yahoo/ICQ or email me if you want some tips or anything.

[Ole Unka Phil]

You could try and measure how much I don't give a dam anymore? :p

[thE_mAd_Dr_shOck]

A joule is a unit of energy. One calorie is 4.19 joules and one calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise 1 g of water by 1 degree C @ STP. Determining the energy liberated or absorbed in a single reaction itself can be calculated on paper and probably won't do you much good since, no matter how you slice it, the reactions are the same although not in the same abundance amongst different plants because of different sizes, genetic factors and growing conditions, etc. However you can determine the amount of energy the whole plant holds through calorimetry. That, however, will tell you the TOTAL energy of all the plant's chemicals, not just those produced through photosynthesis. If you wanted to just do the sugars you'd have to do an analytical seperaition.

[Target Practice]

How about doing a study how being on the internet to much and not paying enough attention can lead to someone getting a 49% in a goddamn sophomore science class.

[tropical_fishy]

A joule is a unit of energy. One calorie is 4.19 joules and one calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise 1 g of water by 1 degree C @ STP. Determining the energy liberated or absorbed in a single reaction itself can be calculated on paper and probably won't do you much good since, no matter how you slice it, the reactions are the same although not in the same abundance amongst different plants because of different sizes, genetic factors and growing conditions, etc. However you can determine the amount of energy the whole plant holds through calorimetry. That, however, will tell you the TOTAL energy of all the plant's chemicals, not just those produced through photosynthesis. If you wanted to just do the sugars you'd have to do an analytical seperaition.


You'd have to have a pretty good chemistry background to pull this off, knowledge of entropy (or enthalpy? It's been a while; thermodynamics, in any case), a basic understanding of the (intricate) way chemistry and biology work within a plant, as well as a calorimeter, which your school may or may not have. I also don't know how it would work as far as hooking a plant up to a calometer; as far as I know, they only measure the heat of a reaction. This kind of experiment would be really difficult to control, because, chances are, your school has crappy tools.

MoeMag, I'm curious, how would you go about removing all the oxygen from a system like that? I DO know how to find out how much oxygen a plant produces over a given amount of time, though; we definitely did an experiment like that senior year in AP Bio. To the OP: Ask me (or Specialblend, he probably remembers it too) about it if you'd like to do that kind of thing. My screenname is up there^ if you'd like to bounce ideas around.

[MoeMag]

. However you can determine the amount of energy the whole plant holds through calorimetry.

WOO HOO
Bon fire time :clap:
http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~beyerle/Animation/zippo.gif

*******************
My CO2 chamber,

I was thinking that the best way to seal a plant into a pressure vessel would be a bell jar. But I don’t have bell jars lying around handy, so I thought I would use a big pickle jar. Anyway I would make a lid for it that would make a good seal, that has two ball valves in the top with one of the valves having a tube that goes to the bottom of the jar (kind of like an anti-siphon tube). Put the plant in the jar, put the lid on, connect a co2 source to the valve with the long tube and open the other valve to the atmosphere. Slowly leak co2 into the jar and because the co2 is heavier than the air, it should displace the air out the open valve. Then once co2 begins coming out of the open valve close both of them and presto! You have a sealed co2 environment at 1 ATM!

[thE_mAd_Dr_shOck]

You'd have to have a pretty good chemistry background to pull this off, knowledge of entropy (or enthalpy? It's been a while; thermodynamics, in any case), a basic understanding of the (intricate) way chemistry and biology work within a plant, as well as a calorimeter, which your school may or may not have. I also don't know how it would work as far as hooking a plant up to a calometer; as far as I know, they only measure the heat of a reaction. This kind of experiment would be really difficult to control, because, chances are, your school has crappy tools.

Nah... I did something similar my sophmore year in high school involving peanuts. The math is acutally really, really easy since all you have to do is relate the temperature the water raised to its baseline (after you've found Hcap through calibration). You can make a bomb calorimeter out of some styrafoam containers, some water, some fire (or a suitable chemical, other crap to force rxn) and a thermometer. Its pretty accurate, too, considering its ghetto as hell. You'd have to have a calibration substance to burn in it first but after that you'd just toast your plant sample (after weighing it, that is). Considering sugars oxidize readily you can calculate the energy released during combustion and make a fair extimate off of that based on literature and a baseline measurement. It'd work quantitatively for overall energy but definately not qualitatively as to the source.

http://carbon.cudenver.edu/public/chemistry/classes/LabNet/bomb/ explains it pretty well.

Ideally, I'd tell him to do a two phase extraction from the plant material, a individual component seperaition using chromatography, identification of each individual component with FTIR or NMR and THEN do both bomb calrimetry + AA spec or photometric titration because I'm anal... But this is just high school. Not a senior thesis. :p

[billybob_81067]

I'm anal... :p

Tee Hee Hee... :D

[SpecialBlend2786]

Tee Hee Hee... :D

Only a redneck...

:tard:

[Gunther_mag_user]

How about doing a study how being on the internet to much and not paying enough attention can lead to someone getting a 49% in a goddamn sophomore science class.
It is partially my fault on that. I am a freshman and the advanced kids take first semester science 1a, second semester science2b. I went into the class, learned a little bit, and then was expected to know way more than I do. I have a horribly slow time learning because I am dislexic and I have horrible problems with focusing. Anyways, none of my fellow peers were willing to help me read(read as in, comprehend) the directions, and my teacher didn't appreciate me asking for help for every single assignment. 30% of our grade is this semester final, and If I can get it done early with >100% then I will be set.

Special: I will definately be interested in some help once I get the general idea of what I'm doing. Thanks for the offer!

Moemag: That sounds like an amazing idea, that would know my teachers socks off.

Tropical: I might end up doing a multi part experiment with that as an observation. I'll be sure to keep your offer in mind ;)

Dr shock: Half the stuff you stated went way over my head. That's a little more advanced and detailed than I want to go, but thanks for the insight!

Phil, is that a challenge? :p


Thanks for taking the time to reply everybody, I really apprecciate it X1bazillion.

[skriptal]

I wish you luck on your science endevor, I placed at the District Science fair, So my Project gets to go to States. :rolleyes:

My project was testing the How the size of a computing cluster effected the efficentcy of cluster in Multi-threaded applications.

Plants are cool, but can be unrelyable, make sure you plant the plants WAY in advance so that you will be able to recoup if some (most) of your plants die the first time.... Whoops...

[Gunther_mag_user]

Ug, No longer any time for plants(deadline is may 12th, also, my plants=doomed.) Any other suggestions? I think it would be cool to make a rail gun but I don't know how I would make a hypothesis and stuff. Thanks.

[SpecialBlend2786]

Ug, No longer any time for plants(deadline is may 12th, also, my plants=doomed.) Any other suggestions? I think it would be cool to make a rail gun but I don't know how I would make a hypothesis and stuff. Thanks.


A friend of mine actually had some plans for a rail gun which used a couple car batteries and a coil or something. I'll check in with him and see if he still has them laying around.