Help!!! 5th grade science fair!!

[WitchOfEndor]

Ugh! My daughter has a science fair & it's mandatory! I am lousy at this sort of thing.:idea: Can anybody give me some inexpensive & fairly easy ideas on a project to do? I could use all the help I can get!!!

Thanks in advance!!!

[halfwaynowhere]

when i was in 5th grade, i did a pretty cool project... something to do with the color of the environment affecting crickets personality, or something like that... i took 3 empty pickle jars, wrapped one in black construction paper, another in white, and left the last one clear. we put soda bottle caps in the jars for food and water (cricket food is available at pet stores), being careful not to put too much water in there... we also took some screen and rubberbands for the tops, so they could get air. we bought 30 feeder crickets from the petstore, put 10 in each jar (we had them put in seperate bags at the petstore so it would be easier), and observed their behavior over a week or so... it was pretty cool, some crickets stood out, a lot of them got names and everything.. anyways, i think the black jar had the most crickets die, some of them drowned... there was one i nicknamed "Miss Piggy" because she was bigger and ate more food. she was in the white jar... but yeah, it was a fun project... i also did a project with magnets once, but that wasn't as cool, all i did was glue different strength magnets to the bottoms of toy cars and then built a raised track for the cars. then i took sticks and glued magnets to the end of those, and people could race the cars, the higher strength magnets were easier to control than the weaker ones, obviously... but i think that was 4th grade... anyways, good luck, and share whatever you decide to go with!

[Kalika]

"Tornadoes" are always fairly easy and cheap... you really just need 2-2 liter soda bottles, some water, and lots of good research. (Hey, research is free!)

[Trithemius]

The very first thing you want to do is read the rules for the projects. A lot of science fairs, even at the grade school level, want real experiments that utilize the scientific method, not demonstrations. The volcano would be a demonstration, as would the raisins in the 7-up, the egg in the bottle, etc.

The second thing you want to do is see what your time frame is. How long do you have to do this project? That can really narrow down your list of potential projects. If you only have a couple of weeks, something involving the growing of plants probably wouldn't work too well.

With that said, HERE'S (http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/category0.html) a site full of science projects in various fields. You can sort the projects by difficulty, and it'll tell you the grade level (elementary, middle, or high) each one is suitable for. A lot of them are demonstrations, so you'll want to look out for those. If the project says "How to make/show/measure/something, it's a demonstration, not an experiment. Now if demonstrations are allowed, you'll have quite a few to pick from.