Make your school’s science fair a success with these engaging experiments that will spark student interest and passion for learning. When brainstorming ideas, be mindful of any applicable rules or special lab equipment requirements for this experiment.
Students utilize the scientific method in this simple experiment with diet soda and Mentos candy. Perfect for kids who love messy science!
Hydrophobic Sand
Kids can gain knowledge about density while creating an engaging science fair project. Their project can involve making their own version of Magic Sand – regular sand that has been coated with hydrophobic material to make the experiment interesting!
Magic Sand can be easily seen when added to water; when mixed together the grains don’t disperse evenly but form bizarre structures due to repellent properties of its molecules. Furthermore, this dry material makes digging for electrical or telephone wires much simpler.
Bouncy Balls
Students can discover elasticity, gravity and Newton’s laws through this engaging STEM activity. Additionally, making bouncy balls with borax helps students gain insights into polymers – chains cross-link when combined.
They can compare how different surfaces impact a ball’s bounce height by timing-tapping each when it drops; this provides them with an understanding of why carpet doesn’t allow its ball to soar as high.
Water Striders
Water striders (otherwise known as pond skippers and water bugs) use surface tension to move across bodies of water like an insect does, giving students the opportunity to engineer their own water strider out of aluminum foil while learning more about its scientific principles behind this phenomenon.
Students tape pieces of sponge to its feet and pennies to the other leg before placing both in water and starting their stopwatches.
Static Electricity
Rubbing certain materials produces static electricity, or static charge buildup. Students can experiment with this simple experiment that involves two books and pieces of paper to see whether the different charges attract or repel one another.
This project introduces students to particles of matter; protons with positive charges are called protons while electrons with negative charges are known as electrons. From here they can apply their knowledge about insulation and conductivity properties of materials like insulators and conductors.
Bacterial Colonies
By fifth grade, children are ready for engaging experiments that introduce them to microbiology. One such experiment – bacteria colony experiment – is simple, safe and an excellent way to demonstrate scientific method.
Students swab door handles to identify surfaces with the highest concentrations of germs and to examine characteristics such as size, color and opacity of bacterial colonies in order to identify specific bacteria species.
Newspaper Engineering
Crafting a science fair project is an integral part of elementary school life. Through these hands-on STEM experiments, elementary students explore biology, physics and chemistry concepts.
Check how tall a tower can grow with newspapers! This engineering science fair project helps kids practice scientific method by creating testable questions and performing multiple trials on each variable multiple times to collect data for analysis, providing valuable results to guide design efforts.
Levitate a Stick Figure
Crafting the ideal science fair project is an integral part of elementary-school education, and requires few ingredients and can usually be completed within two weeks.
Explore physics, engineering and surface tension with this fun experiment that never ceases to amaze kids. As well as being impressively impressive, children also learn about solutions, density and ocean science!
Rockets
Students gain insight into the power of gravity while building and launching bottle rockets, using what they learn to compare data collected about their flight with predictions made at the outset of this experience.
Be sure students wear safety glasses/goggles during this experiment as the “rocket fuel” may spray out quickly and widely. Have them decorate their rockets before assembling them to allow their creativity to flourish! This is also an opportunity for them to express themselves!
Rainbow Rain Clouds
Kids interested in studying the water cycle will love this entertaining experiment that shows how rain falls from clouds when their weight becomes too great for gravity to support.
Children create clouds in a jar using shaving cream and food coloring (rain). Once too heavy, the cloud falls down into its respective jar.
Lemon Science
Lemons are an excellent source of citric acid, making them the ideal ingredient in many scientific experiments. From creating an erupting volcano or lemon battery, kids will gain valuable experience learning about chemical reactions through these projects.
Create a lemon battery with just a penny or copper coin, a zinc coated nail or strip, alligator wires, and alligator clips! Power an LED light bulb!