Engage students with science with these exciting and entertaining experiments! Students will love exploring while also gaining invaluable experience designing and conducting experiments outside of teacher-led lab classes.
Show kids why mood rings change color using this fun science experiment! Plus, it is a fantastic way to teach about chemical reactions and diffusion!
Sunscreen Experiment
Kids often don’t enjoy being told they need sunscreen, so showing its power through demonstration can help them see its value. This science fair project uses simple white beads that change color when exposed to UV light so children can compare different sunscreen products’ effectiveness and compare their efficacy against one another.
Sunscreens work by reflecting and absorbing harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays. In this experiment, organic and inorganic ingredients as well as SPF levels will be examined in relation to one another.
Start this experiment by applying some of each sunscreen type on paper and placing both pieces of paper in direct sunlight for several hours. When looking at both papers after this timeframe, note how the handprints from sunscreens tend to bleach while those without seem to retain some of their original hue. Inorganic ingredients tend to reflect UV rays better while organic ones absorb them and turn their energy into heat instead.
Sundial Experiment
Use of a sundial to tell time is a fascinating science activity that helps students gain knowledge of shadows and the movement of sunlight across the sky. Through this hands-on experimentation students gain an opportunity to see how people in previous times discovered how to tell time without clocks or watches.
Start this experiment by asking students to identify an outdoor spot that receives sunlight all day, placing a flat board there, tracing their silhouettes onto it and noting where their shadow will fall at certain points of the day.
Every day, have the children return to their sundials and observe how their shadows shift throughout the day, from when it first rises until its lowest point (between noon or 1 pm depending on daylight savings time) around noon or 1 pm (depending on daylight savings time). This is how sundials work!
Mineral Experiment
Students learn the science of identifying rocks and minerals through this easy experiment. Students use a streak plate to test the hardness of various common minerals like quartz, mica and graphite; additionally they observe their crystallization processes and whether its cleavage differs from that of other minerals.
This lesson can help children understand the characteristics and uses of different minerals. Students could even form “companies” and compete to mine different rock varieties with specific features.
This activity offers children a fun science activity to let them assume the role of NASA scientists, exploring an intriguing feature on Ceres and discovering something on Mars. They will dissolve different salts into water, predict results and observe and analyze their findings before providing explanations for their observations. Adding this experiment to 4th grade science projects can help kids better understand renewable versus nonrenewable resources while exploring diffusion in an engaging and tasty manner!
Chocolate Chip Experiment
Science offers children many exciting experiments that help them grasp its processes and foster an interest for learning. Fourth graders can explore various science subjects – biology, chemistry and physics among them – by designing and carrying out impressive projects that impress judges.
Discover Interests:
To stimulate student ideas, pose several questions regarding what interests them in science. Use the Science Buds Topic Selection Wizard to select projects based on these answers or let students choose projects based on their curiosity or imagination – that way great science fair projects emerge!