5th graders are eager to engage in hands-on experiments that explore physics, biology, and chemistry. From science fair projects to enrichment activities, these projects engage and excite their minds.
Send students on an exciting quest to understand more about genes and inherited traits with this simple Punnett square experiment. Watch as they recreate surface tension with water striders while learning about the digestive system in this engaging science demo!
Make Your Own Microscope
If students don’t have access to microscopes, this project provides them with an opportunity to become creative in the lab and make one themselves. Not only is this an economical, fun, and quick way of exploring microscopic world, but it’s also an opportunity for them to practice scientific methodology by following Robert Hooke’s studies as models and producing their own sketches and descriptions of them!
Students can discover states of matter through conducting a slime experiment or explore greenhouse effects by measuring heat capacity of water with a joulemeter and calorimeter – this provides a great way to highlight how energy transformation occurs.
Archimedes’ Screw
Archimedes’ Screw is still widely used to lift water today, much as it did centuries ago. Comprised of two commonly-used simple machines (inclined plane and cylinder), rotating this screw forces liquid or small materials upward, providing useful solutions for processing water, irrigation purposes, moving corn crops among many others.
Archimedes screw irrigation works by forcing water up thread-by-thread along a spiral of tubing inside its cylindrical casing, eventually reaching its desired destination – often used by farmers as part of field irrigating practices.
An Archimedes screw can be used for several science experiments, while others require special equipment or license to carry out (e.g. adjusting temperature of fish tank water in order to observe what effect it has on respiration of goldfish). Please consult your school rules prior to conducting experiments involving live animals.
Newspaper Engineering
Hands-on science experiments provide children with an immersive introduction to biology, physics and chemistry. Give one of these 5th grade science projects a try at your next school fair or incorporate it into your lesson plans for even greater impact.
Students participate in this STEM challenge as civil engineers to design and construct a tower from newspaper. With limited paper and tape resources at their disposal, teams must use them wisely when creating structures that can withstand simulated lateral “wind loads”, just like real builders must deal with real world engineering challenges.
Kids can test the insulating properties of various materials to identify an ideal material for making parachute parachutes, providing an invaluable opportunity for teaching about friction and the laws of motion. This experiment can also serve as a great teaching opportunity on topics like friction.
Ball-Run Challenge
Engage students’ engineering design skills and physics learning with this engaging STEM challenge! Students use just paper and tape to engineer a ball run that slows the descent of a ping-pong ball; their designs can then be tested against criteria. Furthermore, this experiment serves as an ideal way of introducing simple machines like levers and inclined planes.
Children will delight in witnessing this fascinating science experiment as they gain knowledge on surface tension and capillary action. Perfect for 5th grade science demos at home!
Airplane Engineering
Model airplanes provide students with an engineering science project to understand what makes an aircraft fly. Furthermore, this experience shows them how engineers develop small-scale prototypes before producing full-sized prototypes to test flight characteristics and performance.
Science experiment ideas for fifth grade can include creating a homemade volcano to demonstrate chemical reactions and plate tectonics; conducting a leaf chromatography demonstration of photosynthesis; building a model of human digestion system; testing surface tension with lava lamp or measuring rate of plant growth using microwave.
Encourage students to construct an entirely different paper airplane design than what was tested previously, and as a class have them perform three trial flights with this second plane and record flight distances and times on worksheets.