8th grade science fair projects are an enjoyable way for children to develop critical questioning and research abilities as well as collaborate with classmates.
Display gravity’s principles using a Bernoulli bottle or apply Hooke’s Law to a simple spring.
Make crystals, unravel DNA and more with exciting chemistry experiments for children! Kids will love grinding tablets using mortar and pestle, filtering through beakers and heating with a Bunsen burner.
Plant Growth
Plants are essential parts of our planet’s ecosystem, producing oxygen for life-support. Exploring how plants grow can help students grasp the scientific principles underlying agriculture.
Tracking the growth of herbs or aloe vera plants can be an engaging science experiment for younger students, giving them a chance to use chart recording observations as well as expand writing skills while exploring a topic they care about.
Students can conduct plant growth experiments by testing different factors that may impact how quickly or slowly a plant grows. An ideal science fair project includes both a control group and variable, along with regular data collection to allow scientists to conduct an experiment and make inferences with confidence.
Crystals
Crystals are fascinating because they form in different shapes and sizes. Kids can experiment with various variables to learn how they affect crystal formation, such as changing sugar concentration levels or using various containers.
Children can make crystals in the shape of snowflakes or other shapes with borax and colored pipe cleaners, or experiment with other household chemicals such as Epsom salt, table salt and baking soda – or even non-household ones such as copper sulfate and potassium ferricyanide which require adult supervision – that impact crystal formation and test how different substances impact it while comparing containers to see how temperature and humidity influence crystal growth.
Water Filtration
If you want to give your kids an understanding of how water filters function, try the charcoal filter experiment offered by All Science Fair Projects. They’ll also gain knowledge on how paint color impacts drying time through this awesome experiment by KiwiCo.
Students can gain hands-on knowledge about oxidation with this interactive activity that highlights how sports drinks differ from water. You’ll need a few special supplies for this 8th grade science fair idea.
This chemistry science fair project will captivate students. They’ll see how baking soda deprives fire of oxygen, extinguishing it. You can experiment with different ratios of baking soda to vinegar for different results.
Paper Airplanes
Use of a paper airplane as an exciting, straightforward science fair project is an engaging, straightforward experience for 8th graders. Examine different plane designs to see which flies further and see how small changes in design and technique have an effect on flight distance.
Locate an indoor area free from traffic such as a long hallway or school gym where planes can fly safely without interrupting traffic flow. As extra math practice, have your students create a line or bar graph of their individual plane trials, explaining how these results could help create better designs in future trials. Ensure every student feels confident with folding patterns of their chosen design of airplane.
Strawberry DNA
Molecular biology is an exciting science topic, made easier for kids to grasp with this fun experiment using household items to isolate, extract and observe strawberry DNA.
SCouts provides this activity that will teach children about DNA’s presence in all living things and how it has its own genetic code, before reinforcing that understanding by witnessing real DNA molecules!
Add one inch of cold rubbing alcohol to the strawberry liquid and watch as a clear, stringy white substance forms on top of it. Dip a clean bamboo skewer into the area where both layers meet and pull it up quickly – could the skewer have picked up any DNA?
Candy Fun
Discover science through candy with this fun candy chemistry experiment! This classic science fair project investigates surface tension, or the bonding force between molecules on liquid surfaces and their molecules at their interior surface, such as soap. Watch its effect on how surface tension changes!
Science fair projects provide students with an exciting way to experiment with physics and engineering concepts while exploring materials for producing the longest-lasting and brightest light bulb possible. Students also learn more about electrical energy usage as part of this experiment.
Create an exciting twist on the traditional egg drop experiment with this physics-based experiment that teaches about gravity and acceleration, force and weight, as well as weight distribution.