Science Fair ideas?

[CarriBrown]

My 6th grade project (a million years ago, haha) was "Can a rat run a maze?"
Maybe you can do "Can a chicken (fill in the blank)?"

 

[carugoman]

DUDES. Your credentials are impressive to all- But have you ever HAD a 6th grader?

Yes, Karen, I have had sixth graders of my own, five of them- my first wife brought two from a previous marriage and we raised three more children. If you think my credentials are impressive... all of my kids and step-kids have graduate degrees and all serve in the military as commissioned officers and yes Karen, I helped them with all of their science fair projects.
For my seventh grade project(hurricane destroyed my school during the summer of my 5-6th grades,) I made a 5 ft by 23 ft FRESNEL Lens and used the sun's energy to have a shrimp and crawfish boil in a 33 gallon metal garbage can-with lid(new and clean of course!) There's an Idea? Make one of those but cook a garbage pail of chicken soup and donate it to your local soup kitchen to help the poor for a day. Like a community-service project or something? Again this is a cheapo project; with easily available parts.​

 

[Rosalind]

Hey carugoman, nice to meet a fellow geek! I'm working (slowly) on my PhD in ChemEng but my undergrad degree is in biology, currently employed as a bench protein chemist/molecular biologist of sorts. No military creds, sorry--I worked on a couple of DoD contracts though.

Hmm, all hens. What about a project to make something useful out of chicken manure and bedding?
-Can it be used to grow gourmet mushrooms?
-Can it be used to grow methane-generating bacteria? There's a lot of interest right now in using methanogens to generate fuel for fuel cells. Your science teacher can help you prepare bacterial cultures and research the bacteria's nutritional requirements.
-How much heat does it generate when composted in a controlled environment? "Hot" compost is literally hot, and ideally you would want to capture this heat in a useful form, use it to drive a turbine.

 

[tvtaber]

Wow, a bit of geek competition on the chicken forum. Love it! While this is my first 6th grader (there are two more behind her) I am an active duty Naval officer working on my PhD (Oceanogrpahy) while teaching at the Naval Postgraduate School. Having said that, I could in no way make a Fresnel lens! (I came to grips with the reality that I am not the smartest person in the room years ago!)

And as for the garbage pail chicken soup... eww.

But what can we do with feathers or chicken droppings, now that I could get into. Methane production... good idea! I wonder if we could make the entire coop self generating, so the methane runs a water pump and light, etc?

 

[chickenshow]

my freshmen science fair actity was does the time daily u turn the eggs effect ur hatch rate one is turned 3 and the other 5

 

[SAZLife]

Quote:
I would imagine that there are a few folks in Tyson country that might like that idea.

Science project or no, I'd like to try some of these things. That solar refrigeration trick sounds fun.

 

[newdock]

I agree with a previous poster that science fair judges prefer an experiment over a display - so if doing well is a factor, do an experiment.

My eldest daughter did one when she was young that compared seedlings given fertilizer and ones not given fertilizer. Of course it is imperative that all the other factors are the same (same amount of light, water, soil etc.).

She made a hypothesis that the ones given fertilizer would grow significantly bigger. Every 2 days, she measured the height of the seedlings and recorded them. We used sunflower seeds, but beans would work well too - just need something that grows quickly.

She did up her board and brought a few seedlings to display.

And yes, fertilizer makes a big difference.

Edit : You could use chicken poop as your fertilizer!

 

[wegotchickens]

Quote:
My daughters each did a similar one. Grew beans in vermiculite (sterile soil mix) and watered them with different things. One was watered with cold coffee, one with Lipton tea, one with green tea & one with water. It was kind of cool to see how it turned out.

The other daughter did the same experiment, but used Miracle Grow instead of plain water.

We were surprised by the results of both!

 

[carugoman]

Yes, it is quite true,that fresh chicken poo is a high-temp manure and needs to be well composted as fertilizer. Instead of thinking in grandiose concepts, try a hypothesis on a much more basic level: using this hi-temp manure to heat a greenhouse or hothouse during the winter. One way of attempting this would be to utilizing a compost pile inside a greenhouse; capturing the heat produced by aerobic/anaerobic activity in a compost system that uses chicken poo as a main component. The internal temperatures of these types of compost piles can and do(from continual personal experiences,) approach 200 degrees F. These types of compost piles are used when a fair amount of green raw material is comprised of weeds and nuisance plants and the hi-temps achieved cook the seeds,roots and rhizomes of these plants.
So chicken poo produces heat for greenhouse that starts seedlings that can earn cash as an additional business stream with greatly reduced energy costs thus increasing liquid assets,helping to increase your carbon credits while decreasing carbon dioxide emissions and you use a renewable energy source at its source with no transportation expenses other than a poop scoop!
All Y'all take care!

 

[SpottedCrow]

How about telling the age of an egg by whether it floats or not...I'm sure that the store eggs will float like a balloon and you could do it with regular store eggs, and the organic free range eggs and with whatever eggs some of us might be able to send ya.

Then there's the old fall back of chicken bingo...you can buy a onetime video recorder so you don't have to bring the smelly disease ridden bird (tongue in cheek) into school.
My girls know the words Treats and Porch. Treats is pretty self explanatory and Porch means Daddy's coming home back out you go.
One hen could even tell time. My DS was late coming home one day and Slifer stood by the door and paced and stretched out her neck looking for him. Of course, when we came in, she bit him for making her worry.