Chromatography
is one of the advanced methods of modern chemistry. The application of
this method is very broad. For this project you can either separate
mixture of unknown substances or study chemical property of the solvent
or stationary phase.
Phototaxis
is the way the living organisms react to the light. It can be positive
(moth flying toward the light) or negative (cockroach hiding in the
darkness).
Moth phototaxis study can be very cool 8th grade science fair project.
Obviously this is also good summer science project.
The questions can try to answer are:
How many different moth species live in
your area?
How light intensity affect the amount of
attracted moths?
How color of the light affect phototaxis.
In other words will red light attract the same amount of moths/species
as blue light?
What kind of light source attract more
moths?
Can moth see the black light?
Which weather moths prefer?
For example for "Phototaxis and the light color" project you'll need:
Square piece of the white fabric (1m^2).
Bright tungsten light source.
Quality color filters used in photography
*
Hypothesis of this project is that moth eyes can see the difference in
the light color and certain light color will attract more moths.
The constants of this project:
Light source power and size
Light source orientation
Variable:
Light source color.
There
are other uncontrollable variables such as temperature and humidity of
the air. You'll need to make records of this variables and make several
trials of your experiment to get some average data. In fact you could
make this variable(s) the main focus of your experiment if your change
your hypothesis.
Procedure:
Fasten fabric on the wall.
Setup the lightsource in front of it so
that lightsource illuminate it uniformly.
Put the color filter around the light
source.
Turn the light on after sunset.
Count the moths that were attracted by
the light early in the morning (ideally - few minutes before sunrise).
Try to count how many different moth species light attracted and how
many specimens of each species.
For better results each morning you can collect them and release in the
nearest park or in the garden. You could also try to tag
some of them to check if they will return back to your trap.
Darwin
Bots and Framsticks - Modeling the Evolution.
Have you
ever heard about evolution simulators? It's a type of computer program
that tries to simulate the processes of natural selection that
occurring
in the real world.
To
study many natural phenomenons modern scientists are building
mathematical and computer models that can simulate it. One example of
such simulation is the computer climate model - one of the global science projects.
Evolution
computer models is another example. There are 2 computer programs
available free of charge that allow you to run virtual evolution
experiments.
Both of them allow you to create virtual
"environment" with certain features and simple organism(s) that inhabit
this environment. Each organism have certain amount of energy and
simple
DNA to keep its genes. Set of genes can be user-defined or randomly
generated. Like in real life genes have complete information about
organism body structure and its functionality.
If organism
successful in its environment it has higher chances to reproduce and
pass its genes to the offspring. Like in real life some genes may got
mutations and part of the information will be lost or distorted. This
mutation may decrease offspring fitness and it will have less chances
of survival but there are chances that some mutation will be more
successful and it's "owner" will get some bonus features.
User
sets parameters of the environment, organism energy limits,
mutation rate, initial genes (optional) and some other and does not
have any influence on the organism features. They develop, like in real
life, following principle of "natural selection".
Fitness trial. Framsticks
interface look more like a screenshot from a computer game.
Both programs are looking like a simple computer games
but allow you to do pretty cool experiments on the artificial life. All
you need for such kind of 8th grade science fair project is computer
and
a little bit of patience. You'll need to read manuals and learn basics
of DNA language (which is different for both programs). But the good
news is that you can find there examples of creatures and ideas
for plenty of experiments that you can carry for your 8th grade science
fair project.
Rotation
of the Sun.
Important!
Never look directly at Sun! It can damage your eyes.
Sun
is the center of our solar system. It's G2 class star. This stars also
known as yellow dvarves. All planets in our solar system rotating
around the Sun and also around their own axis. Earth makes one turn in
almost exactly 24 hours. Mars makes one turn in 24 hours, 39min., 35
sec. It's quite happy coincidence for the mars missions that will
land on this planet as it should be pretty easy to adopt to this
difference. The other planets of our system have very different day
duration. For example Venus's day is 243 Earth days! Venus in many
respects is Earth's sister planet but this rotation rate and
thick
atmosphere made it very inhabitable place. Amazingly the day on Venus
is longer than year so in the morning Sun rises in the
west!
Anyways, if all planets are rotating, our Sun must be
rotating too. What it's rotation period? How it compare to solar system
planets periods? Is there a way to find it out?
Yes, because
Sun's surface have spots. Check position of the spots on the Sun disc
every day and you can measure how fast it rotates.
You may decide to build your own Solar Observatory.
Never look directly at Sun through a
telescope!
Or
you can use latest data from orbital
solar and heliospheric observatory (SOHO). The cool thing
about that is
that you can get data not only visible light but also taken trough
narrow band filters in ultra violet rays. They may reveal
much more interesting
details of the Sun surface than you can see in visible light. You can
also watch and study solar corona (even though it's not directly
related to this project).
Courtesy of SOHO
(ESA&NASA)
Think of what other science fair projects could be done with this great
source of information.
You
may want to participate in some real scientific projects. You can use
scientific data available to the public to study the subject of the
project and make conclusions.
