Science Fair Project

We have been racking our brains to come up with a science fair project. This is a project for my daughter that is in 8th grade in advance science class. Let me start off by saying, her teacher contact has been reduced to almost nil, she has tried to talk to him a couple of times, but since the Aug. 23rd earthquake, in which the only high school was destroyed and now both high school and middle school share the same building alternating days. My daughter goes to school every Tue and Thur and alt. Sat. Which limits her contact with teachers at best. She wants to do something to do with scuba. She was looking at Critcial Lung Volume, but according to her, by working the formula, she would have to go to 5atm, which is not doable for many reasons. I think she would like to do something with pressure, but it cannot be too simplistic or something out of our experience level in diving. I also cannot find my book on Diving Science, which is not helping the situation. I gave her the Padi Rec. encycl. to look through for ideas. If anyone to pass along any ideas or correct her formula for lung volume, please feel free. We are not looking for the hand out on a silver platter just some good ideas. She was going to post this, but for some reason she cannot access SB via her account. The few ideas that she has come up with, there are problems with how to graph them and show the results. It would be more of a demo than an experiement.

Thanks in advance!

Be cautious that if she does something involving her body, she may require additional approval as she is technically a human subject.

Just off the top of my head... if she could get pieces of neoprene of various thicknesses and some calipers, she could measure how much each compresses at different depths. By tying it into buoyancy she could even show how this is a relevant project, not just collecting data for the sake of collecting data like most science fair projects (Are There More Clouds On Weekends? How Many Ants Can My Dog Eat?).

She would not have been the subject, from my understanding, she would have gotten see-thru plastic containers and inverted them after she figured the critcal volume for each one and marked it and took the container down with us. However, the dog thing would be interesting, at least in our house. We have a small dog and likes to kill and roll on moths, she is now referred to as a moth terrier But the wetsuit idea could be interesting. Thanks!!!!

You could do a neat pressure differential project with a few simple instruments. If you put a sealed balloon in a sealed container (pop bottle works) and used a bicycle pump to add pressure to the balloon you could demonstrate how volume decreases as pressure increases. If you wanted to get fancy (much more difficult / expensive) you could add pressure gauges to both the bottle and the balloon.

Another good project would (assuming she would be willing to learn basic stoichiometry, in canada it is a grade 9/10 level thing) she could do a project on re-breathers and how the CO2 adsorbent works. You could get into the basic respiration in animal cells process as well.

Another interesting project could be talking about how masks fog (easy to set up, all you would need is a hot plate and some water) without a hydrophobic coating.

As for graphing, you can graph anything given if you specify the right criteria, for the fogging experiment it could be as simple as drawing a grid and counting how many of the squares are covered in fog, for balloon in bottle you could measure the diameter of the balloon / pressures, for re-breathers, that is chemistry, so it should be enough, but you could graph rates of reaction given conditions. However that is really a university chem thing as you need to know how to use differential equations.

Hope that helps.

Try making a calibrated "artesian diver". A small tube about 10 cm in length is suspended in a column of water (1 meter length of clear material, plexiglass or plastic hose). The little tube should be clear also, but sealed on the top end. Calibrate this with marks. The large container must be sealed, but has to have a pressure source such as a large syringe. Okay, so it looks like this. Big tube is full of water and positioned vertically, with the syringe attached so that fluid can be "pumped" into the container under pressure. To make things even better, a simple pressure gauge could be installed to measure the pressure inside the container. The little tube is floating in the water. The little calibrated tube has a measure of trapped air inside, but is very near neutral buoyancy, so it might require some weighting.

To operate the diver, apply force to the syringe, increasing the pressure on the system. The trapped air in the little tube will compress, causing it to gain weight as the level of water in the little tube increases. When it gains enough weight, the little "diver" will descend. Releasing the pressure on the syringe will have the reverse effect. The changes in the volume of the small tube are observable and even measureable due to the calibrations. By linking the pressure in the tube to the changes in volume, Boyles Law can be demonstrated. It's also great fun to play with!

Just an idea.

Do the water pressure demonstration, what happens at 1 bar, 2 bar, 3 bar.
You could use a tall cylinder made of clear plastic, capped at one end, filled with water.

Inside, at the bottom, a pulley, so you can pull a rope to drag a small bottle from the top to the bottom.
Just image a 4'' diameter clear pipe that's 8' long, using a ladder to "load" the bottom, and pull it to the bottom.

Eye candy for sure! At 8 feet not quite 2 bar, but should be enough to show with a water bottle or balloon.
If you can't find an entire long clear plastic tube, consider the cheap 4" black one used in homes for the toilet drain, and with adapters & such, at the "bottom" end glue a transparent bucket of some sort.
So people can "see" the effect of the pressure.

Also check out SteveSpangler.com for ideas. Some are with soda bottles.

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A crazy thing I *want* to try is taking a 2L soda bottle filled with water to 60', filling it with air, and letting it loose.
Trying the same from the deep end of a pool that's more than 10 feet deep. A 30 footer would probably be perfect.
- with cap, grenade at surface, nice boom
- without cap, becomes a rocket at surface.

Nah, my 8 foot tube idea is way, way better!!! Bigger is better, right?

Kidding aside, SteveSpangler.com has such a "diver", it's a squid thingie that goes inside a soda bottle. Squeeze the bottle, increase the pressure, it goes up, release it goes down.

Guba:

Try making a calibrated "artesian diver". A small tube about 10 cm in length is suspended in a column of water (1 meter length of clear material, plexiglass or plastic hose). The little tube should be clear also, but sealed on the top end. Calibrate this with marks. The large container must be sealed, but has to have a pressure source such as a large syringe. Okay, so it looks like this. Big tube is full of water and positioned vertically, with the syringe attached so that fluid can be "pumped" into the container under pressure. To make things even better, a simple pressure gauge could be installed to measure the pressure inside the container. The little tube is floating in the water. The little calibrated tube has a measure of trapped air inside, but is very near neutral buoyancy, so it might require some weighting.

To operate the diver, apply force to the syringe, increasing the pressure on the system. The trapped air in the little tube will compress, causing it to gain weight as the level of water in the little tube increases. When it gains enough weight, the little "diver" will descend. Releasing the pressure on the syringe will have the reverse effect. The changes in the volume of the small tube are observable and even measureable due to the calibrations. By linking the pressure in the tube to the changes in volume, Boyles Law can be demonstrated. It's also great fun to play with!

Just an idea.

Click to expand...

Mark Derail:

Do the water pressure demonstration, what happens at 1 bar, 2 bar, 3 bar.
You could use a tall cylinder made of clear plastic, capped at one end, filled with water.

Inside, at the bottom, a pulley, so you can pull a rope to drag a small bottle from the top to the bottom.
Just image a 4'' diameter clear pipe that's 8' long, using a ladder to "load" the bottom, and pull it to the bottom.

Eye candy for sure! At 8 feet not quite 2 bar, but should be enough to show with a water bottle or balloon.
If you can't find an entire long clear plastic tube, consider the cheap 4" black one used in homes for the toilet drain, and with adapters & such, at the "bottom" end glue a transparent bucket of some sort.
So people can "see" the effect of the pressure.

Also check out SteveSpangler.com for ideas. Some are with soda bottles.



- - - - - -

A crazy thing I *want* to try is taking a 2L soda bottle filled with water to 60', filling it with air, and letting it loose.
Trying the same from the deep end of a pool that's more than 10 feet deep. A 30 footer would probably be perfect.
- with cap, grenade at surface, nice boom
- without cap, becomes a rocket at surface.

Click to expand...

We have talked about something like this, but there are problems as you mentioned. ie. we don't want to get kicked out of the quarry The other things she wants to try is taking any egg to 2 atm, according to her thinking, if there is any air, the egg should implode on itself. She wants to film it so we can see the whole thing in slow motion-frame by frame. The fish would love us, I think???? I just don't know if a fresh egg would work or would we need to leave it rot for a while.

Something simple, with the gear you already have (tank + reg + air gage) using compressed air as "fuel" for a motor / propulsion.

There is an air pocket in an egg, it will implode. Though I don't think it would be at 2 Bar, it would be at a higher density.

How about something silly and cheap?

- A step stool
- A Sliky
- A tennis ball

Read this "thread" that I made on PriusChat.com
Slinky Drop - make your prediction !!! - PriusChat Forums

Another one I like is dropping some "super balls" off a tall building. Demonstrating how height transfers Potential Energy to the ball, but the higher you go, the energy at one point ceases to increase due to Air Friction and Terminal Velocity.

Great video opportunities, like skydiving and letting go of the super ball. Does it go up or down relative to "you".

Does being hit on the head by a super ball dropped from 20 stories hurt? Does the ball bounce as high hitting pavement or the roof of a car?

Yep, my kids are messed up...! My 19 yr old son is a DM, believe it or not.

Just a consideration, anything involving any kind of "high" pressure will probably need to be cleared with the school for liability reasons. I got in trouble (in a less litigious culture) for taking a sample of nanoscale TiO2 into school for a project. Even though it is almost completely inert (when not spread on your skin in some sunscreens) due to the relatively unknown properties of nanoparticles at that time the school was not happy. Now that I am taking nanotech at university we have an entire course dedicated to how much cancer nanoscale materials will give us.
Back to topic: check with the school before even bringing a scuba tank into the building.