As parents, we know it’s important for our children to wear safety helmets when biking, skiing, skating or participating in any activity where there’s a chance of a fall or crash. But have you ever wondered which helmets are the best in protecting their noggins?
Third grader Jack Liebold took this question on for his science fair project. The problem? How do you test helmets without using real crash test people? Easy. He used honeydew melons to use the scientific method and test his hypothesis.
Jack joined me during my weekly newscast experiment on 9News to share his results and how he conducted his experiment.
If you’re a Seinfeld fan, you undoubtedly remember George Costanza’s double-dip chip episode where he takes a chip, dips it, take a bite and dips it again – the famous double-dip. The best line in the whole episode comes from the guy at the party who confronts George and says, “When you take a chip… just take one dip and end it!” When my son, Jack, saw the episode, the light bulb went on and a science fair project was born. Of course, this science-loving 5th grader isn’t the first to come up with such a test, but Jack wasn’t afraid to challenge others who’ve come up with the conclusion that the act of double-dipping your chip is no big deal. And the conclusion… you’ll have to look at the Petri Pudding picture below to see for yourself (hint: don’t double dip!)
If you’re looking for a cool science fair project, take a look at Jack’s Double-Dip Chip Challenge. Jack used Comic Life software on his iMac to present his science fair project in a more eye-catching style than the traditional
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It’s fun to get these e-mails from the parents of kids who had a great science fair experience. Ken Landau shared these pictures from his son’s science fair project. Brett used the Oil Spill Clean-up kit as the foundation of his third grade science fair project.
Brett has a very real love of science, experimentation, and model building. He found your site and this experiment by himself and we both agreed it looked very interesting. Your site was very informative and your staff very helpful (even letting me add to my order after it was submitted online.) – Ken
Here’s how Enviro-Bond 403 Oil Polymer works… Just sprinkle a small amount of this polymer onto the layer of oil and in seconds the polymer bonds to the oil, forming a sponge-like material that can be easily removed from the jar of water. This polymer is specially formulated to bond quickly and safely to many types of liquid hydrocarbons including crude oil, diesel fuel and gasoline. The bonding is so complete that it literally encapsulates the liquid hydrocarbons in just seconds. Here’s an incredible solution to future oil spill disasters.
I’m excited that people are using our library of easy science experiments over at SteveSpanglerScience.com. Over 100,000 people receive our Experiment of the Week,but as you might imagine the level of interest goes through the roof at this time of the year when everyone is searching for a cool science experiment or science project idea. My hope is that parents will take a minute to view the opening video on our Science Fair Secrets page to better understand how to help their children avoid the most common science fair mistake – not understanding the difference between a science demonstration (a cool science trick) and a real science experiment. As so many of you know, it’s easy to turn a science demonstration into an experiment as long as you understand how to control a variable and compare results from a number of trials.
You’ll find lots of science fair resources for both students and parents on our Science Fair Secrets page and just a few ideas that might get your creative juice flowing.
You might have seen t-shirts or special jewelry (beads) that changes color in sunlight. UV Beads look like ordinary white beads used to make a craft project, but embedded in the plastic is a special pigment that changes color when exposed to ultraviolet light. The color change takes place in just seconds – almost like magic. Mrs. Bratteli’s Third Grade Class from Aikin Elementary School in Paris, Texas, used the beads as a way to see if sunscreen lotion really blocks out harmful ultraviolet light from the sun.
We did an experiment with your UV beads and sunscreen and the types were 10, 30, and 50 SPF. We put them each on a foam plate and had a nothing plate. They changed colors exactly how they were supposed to, but the 50 you couldn’t see. Read the full experiment write-up.
But, like all good experiments, these third graders discovered something else…
We left them all over the weekend and here are our results. The SPF 50 sunscreen also ate through the Styrofoam plate! The spf 10
You might have seen t-shirts or special jewelry (beads) that changes color in sunlight. 
