Simple, One Day Science Fair Projects

When you are a student in school, you are supposed to be learning about what is already out there. Students are not expected to make huge new discoveries. The discoveries should be new to them, so that can add it to their knowledge base. But they will not and should not be totally new scientific concepts. What would the point be? You want to learn all about what others have discovered about why your world works the way it does.

With that being said, tinkering and fiddling around with things can create interesting inventions. This is one of the best parts of science that gets overlooked, the accidental science experiment. That comes when you are trying to solve a problem and tinker, until you come up with something. What usually then happens is you learn what the science concepts was that made it work that way. This is the sort of thing that people do all the time when trying to solve a problem. The cold air is leaking in through underneath the front door and so you tinker until you find something that does a good job blocking it.

Never been done before can mean never in the same way you tried it! What makes these things original science fair projects is how YOU go about doing it!

The fact of the matter is that scientific principles are the same ones that have been around for ever and will be here as long as the Earth is doing its thing, It would be next to impossible to look for an unique science idea, and there are those who waste a lot of energy trying to do that. Remember science is looking at the world around you and explaining why things work the way they do. It is not looking at the world for something no one has noticed ever before. It happens, but usually not with a school science fair project.

Then there are the times you want to demonstrate a principle like evaporation, but make the experiment unique, brand new different than all others and never been done before. Besides the fact that evaporation is what it is and there are not all that many varieties of water, Educationally speaking you are better off using a type of experiment that other children in the past have had success with, since the point again is learning about the principle here. Luckily there are a gazillion varieties to choose from.

What makes it unique is your interpretation, and your unique contribution!
How you chose to set it up, the time of day, the type of container, which liquids you use are all things that make it your own.
The design of you display board, your writing of the summary in unique because it comes from you.

This gets tricky because scientists copy each other's experiments all the time. In fact it is how they validate their findings! If you find a cure for the common cold, no one will believe you until other scientists do the same experiment and get the same results.

No, this is not copying, it is "replicating" a fancy scientific term that means other people doing the same thing and getting the same results.

So when we talk about copying we are not saying don't do the same project someone else did. You want to get ideas from others and do an experiment you know is going to work out for you. You just do the whole thing yourself, and keep track of your own data, and then see what YOUR data tell you about the experiment.

You just can't copy the results, the charts, the write ups, the display board exactly from a project someone else did. That is copying, that is cheating and that is frankly illegal.

Each time an experiment is done there will be little differences, even though the basic principals are the same. Water will boil at 212 F and freezes at 32 F no matter what. However, the type of container you use, the air temperature, the humidity are all things that could affect your data in how long it takes to boil or freeze and how long it stays boiling or frozen once you do something to the heat source.

There are plenty of quick and easy science fair projects available that are have been tested out and enjoyed by many children in the past and can easily be made your own.