Science Projects

[V M]

I use to love science projects when I was in school and sometimes enjoy reading/watching about new science breakthroughs

Are any of you involved in any science projects? What are they?

I just got through cleaning a few out of my refrigerator   

[Devlyn]

I tried an Ant Farm once, it..........wasn't pretty.

[Anna++]

I went to a math / science center for my morning classes during high school.  Each year we had a different project based on what science class we were taking.  I got to make a hovercraft my senior year

[Devlyn]

Um, hovercraft are squirrely. You're essentially an upside down air hockey puck!

[Anna++]

Pretty much.  My teammate and I never got to ride them, but the experiment was to figure out what made them hover the highest.  I think we determined that the higher the surface area the lower to the ground they go.

[V M]

Sounds like a cool project    I want a hovercraft

[Anna++]

Do it yourself?  Here are instructions!

http://www.dvice.com/archives/2012/06/video-of-the-da-35.php

[spacial]

I made a crystal set once. I had to set up a huge aerial. I could only pick up a few stations but they were quite good. Though only through headphones.

Mine was based upon a germanium diode. I seem to recall I used my body as a condenser, but that may have been just an idea which I never got around to.

Does anyone else here know anything about Crystal sets?

[Devlyn]

In World War II, the soldiers used to make crystal sets using a rusted or blued razor blade. The oxidation functioned as a semiconductor (diode). http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio

[cisdad]

It is oriented more to data analysis and modelling than building fun stuff, but the blog http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com has a tag called 'project folder' for do it yourself opportunities.

er, climate related data and models.

[Joelene9]

I made a crystal set once. I had to set up a huge aerial. I could only pick up a few stations but they were quite good. Though only through headphones.

Mine was based upon a germanium diode. I seem to recall I used my body as a condenser, but that may have been just an idea which I never got around to.

Does anyone else here know anything about Crystal sets?

I had one as a Christmas gift from my uncle.  It had a tunable coil with wiper, a long wire antenna, a ground wire to the cold water pipe and a bronze whisker you contact on a galena crystal until you got sound from the headphones.  The original type.  The latter sets did come with the germanium diode, 1N 34 or Japanese equivalent.  MF AM radio reception only. 
  You may have used your body as a ground plane, maybe.  A condenser and capacitor are the same things, your body is not that.  The condenser is just an earlier name for a capacitor. 
  That got me interested in electronics and like my uncle, I joined the Navy, got advanced electronics training, served on a carrier and made a career out of electronics just like him.  He is still alive. 

  Joelene

[Joelene9]

In World War II, the soldiers used to make crystal sets using a rusted or blued razor blade. The oxidation functioned as a semiconductor (diode). http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio

A friend in the Navy wired a coil with a Germanium diode inside of a mechanical pencil we were issued in boot camp for taking notes.  He had some wire with mini alligator clips plus a tiny earphone hidden in his boot.  We weren't allowed to listen to radio during boot camp, except when our company commander allowed us to turn on the barracks one, maybe a couple of times.  My friend would clip a wire leading to the diode to the metal bunk bed frame and used the other end of the diode to tune the coil after lights out.  He was in the Great Lakes recruit base and he got a strong rock station from Chicago every night.  He was never caught doing that. 

  Joelene

[Joelene9]

  Which science project?  I did so many of them growing up.  Let see, um... Crystal set, Mua-ha-ha chemistry experiments, optical experiments.  A microscope used to look at crystals, onion skin, pond scum, insect wings, blood cells, etc.  A telescope to look at stars and do optical experiments with the primary mirror.  Sending a house mouse I trapped up in an Estes rocket up to 800 ft, it survived and I let it go in the field.  Photographic darkroom made from scratch with my first enlarger made from the telescope primary with the projection on a photo paper easel attached to the wall.  A lot of mischief done. 

  Joelene

[Sarah84]

I wouldn't call it science, but I once built an FM radio transmitter in my teens, and was playng some music ... unofficial radio station for one week , it was lot of fun, it covered 1km area from our house. I remeber that my poor knowledge of antennas and impedance adaptation was a big problem...and some side effects like TV jamming, and after some experiments to improve power gain I untuned the circuits so much that I can't get it working properly again.

[Jamie D]

I taught model rocketry for several years at the California Museum of Science and Industry, as it was then called.  We launched our rockets on the final day of class from the parking lot of the Los Angeles Coliseum.

The kids learned about electrical circuits (because we each build a launch pad and controller), the physics of propulsion; ballistic trajectories, and how to use the tools for crafting the model.

Fun times. 

[V M]

I made some model rockets in younger days, it was great fun    Although finding the darn things after their landing chutes deployed was kind of a pain in the somethin'

[Devlyn]

So everyone knows about "Rocket Candy?"

[Anna++]

Here is a screenshot of my personal (computer) science project:

[Sara Thomas]

I do a lot of work with gravity.

(pun intended... I'm very serious.  )

[Northern Jane]

Physics was my  passion.

Forty years ago, after college and before leaving home, I built a 0.5MeV Linear Electron Accelerator from junk when state of the art was the 1.0 MeV accelerator at M.I.T.  It took up a whole room in my parents basement. It never got any bigger because I didn't have a good enough vacuum pump to get my beam much beyond 15 feet, but it worked