Here are some ideas for 6th grade science fair projects on flying
insects.
How sensitive flies to the food smell? Could we possibly measure their
sense of smell? What are flies food preferences?
Do all the flies like the same food? What else but food we
could use as the insect attractants?
You
can study food habits of other insects such as wasps, bees or beetles.
If you want you can build your project around similarities and
differences in their diets.
Any of questions above can be developed into the good
projects with results that you can measure, reproduce and use for the
project extension.
First of all you'll need a few effective fly traps. There are many
suggested constructions. You can look them up here. Or here.
Let's check which fresh
food is the most attractive for the flies. You'll need:
4 fly traps,
3 food samples.
Try
to use a piece of fresh meat, a piece of fresh fish and a small amount
of
honey as bait. You can try any other fresh food you like. put bait in
3 traps and leave one empty as a control. Leave bait in the same place
outside for the whole day. Count the amount of flies in the
traps. Are they all of the same species? Now you can try the same
experiment with a spoiled food. Try to find a sample of food which
will attract the biggest amount of insects.
If you have a
backyard you can now study if flies prefer to live in certain places of
it. Put the same amount of the best flies bait in the trap and set the
traps in the different parts of the backyard. Put one in the house.
Count the amount of flies you caught.
Place traps outside for a certain period of time during the day and you
can build a graph of flies daily activity.
Which fruit contains the biggest percentage of water?
In this 6th grade science fair project you'll find the driest and the
wettest fruit you can get in local grocery store.
You'll need
Foil.
Fruit samples.
Kitchen scales or laboratory scales.
Oven.
The
more fruit samples you try the better. You'll need 20-30 grams of
fruits for each sample. Kitchen scales sensitivity is pretty low and
you'll get significant error if your sample weight is less than that.
If you have access to the laboratory scales which can sense milligrams
you can use smaller sample, experiment will be complete faster and
you'll get more precise results.
Procedure:
Weight ~20-30
grams of fruit. Make a small square foil chamber. Dice fruit
into
the chamber, try to make small pieces. Try not to loose any juice.
Repeat the same procedure with the other fruit samples.
Put
samples in the oven, setup low temperature (less then 100C)
and
leave for a few hours. When samples are completely dry measure their
weight. Subtract the weight of the foil. Calculate percentage of the
water contained in the fruits.
The ability to root is different in different species. You could put a
stick into the wet sand and grow a
willow
tree, but for
capricious roses you have to keep the conditions precisely, just to
root
one cutting out of ten. To solve this problem some
gardeners are using commercial rooting
hormone to root stubborn plant cuttings.
Are commercial rooting hormone really effective?
You are about to find it in this 6th grade science fair project.
For this 6th grade science fair project you'll need:
30 plastic cups.
30 fresh cuttings.
rooting hormone that you can buy in the
garden shop.
willow water.
It
is known that willow tree has plenty of natural substances for
successful root incubation. In this project you can compare rooting
effect of willow water on cuttings with other substances. It is easy to
make willow water: Soak this year's willow shoots in water for 24
hours, and use this water for rooting.
Prepare
3 groups of cups, 10 cups in each group. Fill first group with the
water - that will be control group. Put rooting hormone solution in
second group. Check directions on its package for the right
concentration. Fill the third group with willow water. Put cups away
from the direct sunlight.
Check every day
how rooting process going. It may take two-three weeks. Add some water
from time to time to keep water level constant.
You
could add even more groups of cuttings and put it in a solutions of
substances that you think could promote rooting process. You can also
compare it with effectiveness of aspirin and fungicide. Honey is good
substitute for commercial fungicide, so you can compare its effect on
rooting too. Just remember to
keep concentration of the substance rather low. If YOUR substance does
promote rooting, you can try another experiment with different
concentrations.
You could compare cuttings of a different plants
species on their rooting abilities as well.
How fast vitamin C is degrading in boiling water? Learn how to
use
vitamin C titration method to complete this project.
Fresh
fruits and vegetables are our main source of vitamin C. However cooking
will decrease amount of this vitamin or will completely destroy it.
You'll need:
Tablet of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) of
known concentration.
Bethadine or other Iodine
solution.
Potato or corn starch.
Eye dropper (pipette).
Glasses, pan, stove.
This experiment requires work with boiling water, so be careful or get
adults involved.
Procedure:
Dissolve one tablet of vitamin C in 1
liter of pure water. Calculate vitamin C concentration.
Put 20 ml of vitamin C solution in a
glass, add half teaspoon of starch.
Add
Iodine solution - one drop at a time. Count the drops and stir the
solution. When starch will turn blue, write down Iodine drops number.
This procedure called titration.
Now you know how much Iodine you need to react with known amount of
vitamin C in the solution.
All
you need now is to boil the rest of your solution and take samples from
the boiling liquid each minute. Put samples in individual glasses and
repeat titration.
The
Color of the Light and the Solar Panel Output.
Does
solar panel produce the same output from different components of
the light? Which part of the spectrum produce the most
electricity in the solar cells?
For this 6th grade science fair project you'll need
solar cell
cardboard
prism
voltmeter
plasticine
Procedure:
Put the prizm in the beam of the
sunlight. Make sure you know how to produce
spectrum from the white solar light. Find a prism orientation that
produces the best rainbow and fasten prism in this position.
You
may want to use blue tack or plasticine or maybe you can find
some better way to keep
prism in place.
Make a small square opening in the
cardboard so that only one component of a spectrum would pass.
Connect voltmeter to the solar cell and
attach cardboard with the opening to it.
Position
the solar cell so that red part of the spectrum hits the opening in the
cardboard. Read the current value from the voltmeter.
Read values from a green and blue parts
of the spectrum.
