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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: How to Make a Guitar Sing

For Students 9th - 10th
This is a great project for musicians interested in the physics of stringed instruments. If you have ever played an acoustic guitar, you may have noticed that picking a single string can make one or more of the other (unpicked) strings...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: How to Make a Piano Sing

For Students 9th - 10th
The renowned pianist Vladimir Horowitz once said, "The most important thing is to transform the piano from a percussive instrument into a singing instrument." In this lab, you will learn about sympathetic vibrations, a method used to...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: What Material Makes the Most Resonant Soundboard?

For Students 9th - 10th
If you like music and musical instruments, this project might resonate with you. You will investigate materials that could be used to build acoustic musical instruments. You can then use a music box mechanism and a sound level meter to...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Do String Players Have Longer Left Fingers?

For Students 9th - 10th
Physical activity is needed for maintaining normal bone strength and mass. But whether physical stress on finger bones during development leads to an increase in finger length, is something you will discover in this project not by...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Correlation Between Pitch & Age, Gender, Musical Background

For Students 9th - 10th
Music can be a great way to learn more about science. This project uses music to examine whether there is a correlation between age, gender, or musical background and being able to sing with perfect pitch.
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Artificial Intelligence Teaching a Computer to Play Tic Tac Toe

For Students 9th - 10th
This is a more challenging JavaScript project. You will have to figure out a way to translate game strategy into a computer algorithm. Directions will show you how to create a working Tic-Tac-Toe board on a webpage. Just by showing the...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Most Effective Treatment for Whitefly Infestations on Plants?

For Students 6th - 8th
Whiteflies are a group of closely related insect species whose larvae live on plants. Like aphids, they suck nutrients from the plant's circulatory system. You will be asked to find the most effective method for fighting a whitefly...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Caffeine and Heart Rate: A Pharmacological Study Using Daphnia

For Students 9th - 10th
In this project, water fleas (Daphnia magna), a semi-transparent freshwater crustacean, are used to study the effects of caffeine on heart rate. You do not have to learn how to take a crustacean's pulse though, because you can actually...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Earthworms: Nature's Tiller?

For Students 6th - 8th
Everybody knows that worms are good for the soil, but not everybody knows why. This lab shows you how to efficiently measure earthworms within units of soil to determine their affect on decomposition and reduction of surface residue.
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: No Pain, Lots of Game

For Students 3rd - 8th
This science fair project investigates whether video games, and other forms of mental distraction, have the power to relieve pain. You will research and learn about gatekeeper cells, which control how the brain perceives pain, and how...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Can You Predict a Bird's Lifestyle Based on Its Feet?

For Students 3rd - 5th
Animals have special features that allow them to adapt to conditions in certain environments. You might not be able to dive down 3281 feet to observe the deep sea anglerfish, but in this science fair project you can discover what the...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Do Re Mi With Straws

For Students 9th - 10th
Check out this fun science fair project about the physics of musical sound production. Here you will make musical instruments with drinking straws, one for each note on a one-octave major scale. You will figure out the right lengths for...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: The Chills and Thrills of Roller Coaster Hills

For Students 6th - 8th
Lots of people enjoy roller coasters, but not many understand why they feel the strange excitement they do when riding them. In this science fair project, you will build and use an accelerometer to figure out and measure gravity-induced...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: You've Got Permission to Be a Backseat Driver!

For Students 3rd - 8th
You can see what happens to your car's fuel efficiency when it takes you downtown to see a movie, up a hill for a great view, or out for a cruise on a flat country road. This is because a car's fuel efficiency does not remain the same...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: I Love Ice Cream, but It Doesn't Love Me: Lactose Intolerance

For Students 6th - 8th
Pizza, milk shakes, and ice cream sundaes all contain dairy products, therefore they cannot be eaten by the majority of people around the world. Dairy products contain the sugar molecule lactose, and the majority of people on the planet...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Pinocchio's Arm: A Lie Detector Test

For Students 6th - 8th
You might be surprised to learn that you have been practicing skills closely tied to lying if you have ever seen someone in pain, or mimicked your favorites sports athlete. In this science fair project, you will discover how your brain...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Green Your Pc: Help Your Computer Save Power

For Students 6th - 8th
Check out this science fair project to determine how much power your PC really uses, and if it is an energy hog, how you can reduce its appetite for energy. You will learn how to profile and streamline your computer's power usage, while...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Gaming?

For Students 9th - 10th
In this science fair project you will examine real data from a California research scientist of over 3,000 video game players. The objective is to see if there is such thing as a videogame addict.
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Unleash the Power of a Pinwheel!

For Students 9th - 10th
In this science fair project, you will learn more about wind-powered devices, like pinwheels. Much like pinwheels, we react in different ways to the direction of the wind when we ride bikes, or even try to walk.
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Tough Beans: Which Cooking Liquids Slow Softening the Most?

For Students 3rd - 8th
Beans are important to the diets of many people, that is why you always find it cooked a specific way or in a specific dish in different cultures. Here you will learn how the liquid that beans are cooked in affects how quickly or slowly...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Gamers: Myth or Man?

For Students 9th - 10th
Lots of people have preconceived ideas and perceptions of people because of stereotypes. This science fair project will help you examine whether the stereotypes of "gamers" actually matches those that actually play video games.
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Use Dna Sequencing to Trace the Blue Whale's Evolutionary Tree

For Students 9th - 10th
Around 50 million years ago, the mammalian ancestor of today's whales returned to the ocean. In this genomics science fair project, you will use mitochondrial protein sequencing to trace the evolution of whales and identify their closest...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: I See a Full Moon Rising, and Shrinking, or Do I?

For Students 9th - 10th
The moon appears bigger at the horizon just as it is rising over the treetops, than it does later in the evening when it is overhead. This is because our perception of its size changes based on where it is in the sky. In this human...
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Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Speleology: Counting Formations in a Local Cave

For Students 6th - 8th
In the past caves have been used for shelter, for religious purposes, and for burial sites. They were even used for food storage before refrigeration, because they are cool and have constant high humidity. Get ready for an adventure as...