Check out these websites:

• mySTEMspace – An interactive platform offering resources and activities for STEM learning, emphasizing creativity and innovation.
• Science Buddies: Topic selection wizard – A helpful guide for students to select and execute science fair projects with background information and resources.

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Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

A project that helps ensure food security, sustainability or competitiveness in agriculture, fisheries or food production.

 

Aquaponics

Aquaponics takes the ideas of hydroponics (growing plants in water) and crosses it with aquaculture (raising aquatic animals like fish, crayfish, snails, etc. in tanks). Plants need nutrients to grow, and as part of their day-to-day business, aquatic animals excrete … nutrients. Why not put the two together for a symbiotic food-growing bonanza? There’s an apparent efficiency to the nutrient-cycling of aquaponics, but there’s also a complexity that does exist with more traditional ways of raising food. Taking on aquaponics as a project, you can try to tease apart the pros and cons, the costs and benefits, the inputs and the outputs, and let the rest of us know if this is the future of food.

General advice:

• You’ll want to research aquaponics: the hardware, monitoring, and other technology used, as well as the ideas behind how the symbiotic system works.

Possible topics include:

• Design and build your own aquaponics system and compare the yield to a traditional soil-based garden
  • Ensure your design is realistic for the space and time you have, the amount of money you’re willing to spend, as well as your building skills. Keep track of trade-offs you must make and the impact you think they might have on yield; this kind of information would go well in any finished presentation or report you make.
  • Note! An aquaponics harvest typically includes the aquatic animals in your system as well, so think ahead about how (or whether) you’ll handle this. You may want to choose your aquatic animals based on your comfort level in turning them into food.
  • It’s worth repeating: Be careful of cost, because when bought new, tanks and pumps can be expensive.
• Design and document an aquaponics system for the average family that can provide a significant amount of food but is also maintainable.
  • Take a survey of common aquaponics designs, taking note of any components that will significantly increase cost, or that will be difficult for an average person to maintain.
  • You’ll likely want to do additional research on whether expensive aspects of a system could be left out or replaced with a cheaper alternative.
  • Once you’ve settled on a design (or two), compile a more detailed list of parts needed, and their cost. Research maintenance need, and estimate food yield your system might produce.
  • Be sure to give careful thought to the plants and aquatic animals to be grown.
• Set up your own aquaponics system; then, measure and record the inputs and outputs of your system, comparing the yield with other methods of food production.
  • As detailed in the previous two ideas, do some research on the kind of system that will be possible for you to build.
  • You’ll also want to search for the methods used for measuring the productivity of agricultural land, since “traditional farming” will likely be what people will want to compare your system to.
  • Be sure you include cost as well as your time when considering the efficiency of your system. It would be worthwhile to also imagine how well your system could scale up to feed more people. Would your system become more efficient?

 

Crop rotation practices

Crop rotation is the systematic rotation of different crops on a piece of land over time, with the goal of preventing soil nutrient depletion and decreasing crop vulnerability to pests and disease. Yet despite these benefits, there are still farmers who don’t follow best practices when it comes to crop rotation, instead planting only one or two types of crop year after year. This topic is at an important intersection of climate change adaptation and feeding a growing population. Picking a project related to crop rotation will allow you to dig in to the biology behind the practice, giving you the opportunity to grow some new ideas, and possibly shine some sunlight on how we can work with nature rather than against it.

Possible topics include:

• Research the potential negative impacts of monoculture crops
  • Research, then report and/or present what you’ve found. You may want to choose who your target audience is – it might be farmers who need to be convinced of the practice, or your fellow students who might not know why this is an important topic.
  • Consider recreating some of the issues of monoculture crops, then create your own live display comparing plant growth.
  • What are the conditions that allow pests and disease to thrive on crop land? What is it about crop rotation that works to counter those conditions?
• Discover the biology and chemistry behind soil fertility
  • How do the nutrients that plants need to grow end up in the soil? How are plants able to utilize those nutrients? Make sure you include all the “supporting actors,” like bugs and microorganisms.
  • As above, this is a good opportunity to grow some demonstration plants to back-up your findings.
• Propose new crop rotation ideas that enhance soil resilience and food production for your area
  • “The Three Sisters” is the growing practice of planting corn, beans, and squash together to enhance growing conditions. Why do those three plants do particularly well together? Can you look at other crops that are suitable for our climate that might also work well together in this way?
  • For a more convincing proposal, you may want to go beyond just the plants and consider the equipment required to harvest and process the crops you’re proposing.
• Undertake a comprehensive land productivity comparison of a field replanted with the same crop each year and one that is carefully rotated
  • Find out how agricultural land productivity is measured and compare the output of similar fields: one where crop rotation is practiced, and one where it isn’t.
  • Make sure to consider not just what comes off the field, but the inputs that are required too.
  • I’m unsure where you’ll find agricultural land productivity information, so make sure you have a good source before you get too far into this project.

 

Food preservation

About 17% of global food production goes to waste; waste that can be linked to between 8-10% of global carbon emissions¹. What’s interesting is that 61% of that waste comes from households. With all the effort, expense, and resources involved in getting food from the farm to your fridge, how is it that so much food spoils before it’s used? The good news is with large numbers like these, reducing food waste represents some low-hanging fruit for improvement. Sink your teeth into this problem and help reduce the environmental impact of feeding the world’s population.

Possible topics include:

• Investigate the efforts and products used to preserve fruits and vegetables as they go from the farm to the supermarket
  • Follow some perishable food as it makes its journey from the farm to the supermarket, and highlight the steps taken to prevent the food from spoiling. Make sure you explain the science behind why those efforts may or may not work.
  • Can you quantify to what degree these approaches have reduced waste? Do any of these approaches have environmental, nutritional, or taste side-effects?
• Research and test a new method or approach to food preservation, once the food is in the consumer’s home
  • Since spoiled food is what you’re trying to delay, research what’s happening to food as it decomposes.
  • Research current methods used at home to prevent food from going bad and assess their effectiveness.
  • Be cautious about eating any of the preserved/old/spoiled food. You could add some weight behind your new idea – and save yourself a hospital visit – by including research into food-borne illnesses. Reading about botulism might be a good place to start.
• Research traditional methods of home food preservation, followed by research into how those methods worked
  • Many of these methods may still be used today, although be less common.
  • Example preservation methods: Salting, pickling, smoking, dehydration, canning, fermentation.

 

Invasive species

An invasive species refers to any organism introduced to an area where it has not naturally existed before. Such non-native species often outcompete native species, leading to ecosystem degradation, altered food chains, and significant economic loss. Humans are most often responsible for introducing these invasive species, sometimes unintentionally, for example, Zebra Mussels arriving in North Americas Great Lakes via the ballast water of Atlantic-crossing ships. At other times, the introduction is intentional, such as the case of wild boars in Alberta, which were brought from Europe by individuals who wished to hunt them. This could be an interesting topic because there are so many different examples to be found of invasive species – probably even in your own backyard!

Possible topics include:

• Research how non-native species affect the local plants and animals in your area
  • Check out the website of the Alberta Invasive Species Council and see what kind of invasive species may be around you
  • Research how invasive species can out compete native species
  • Conduct some field studies by going out to find invasive plants, bugs, and maybe animals.
• Develop a localized invasive species management plan for a select invasive species
  • Pick an invasive species that is living near you, then research how it may be out-competing native species. How does it reproduce? What, and how much, food does it consume? What is the history of how this pest got here?
  • Are there any existing efforts to eradicate it, or at least limit its spread in Alberta?
  • Research how other places have handled similar situations. New Zealand is well known for their aggressive protection of native species.
  • Example: Tansy is a common noxious weed in Alberta that grows aggressively, is toxic to animals, and thrives in a wide range of environmental conditions. Many counties do have management plans for this weed that include spraying on public land, bylaws requiring landowners to manage Tansy population with potential incentives and fines, and free weed identification service.
• Investigate the traits that lead to particularly troublesome invasive species
  • You could limit yourself to just one group – such as animals – but you may find that all problematic invasive species have common traits, making it a more natural fit to include all invasive species.
  • What are the non-native species doing to out-compete? How are those same species kept in check in their natural habitat?
  • For example: Many aggressive invasive plants grow in incredibly dense patches, which can exclude any other plants from growing. They’ll also have incredibly effective ways of spreading, such as Caragana, which have seed pods that “snap” open to shoot their seeds a fair distance away.
• Create a case study that serves as an example of the dangers of invasive species
  • Example: Zebra and Quagga mussels can foul important infrastructure by attaching themselves in large numbers to boats, motors, pipes, and pumps. With many industries using natural water bodies to cool their equipment, the cost of living with these mussels is high. For the natural habitat, these mussels can filter so much phytoplankton out of the water that other species relying on the same food source are unable to survive.

 

Soil horizons

Standing out on the open prairie and looking off into the distance, one is often rewarded with a breath-taking horizon of varied colours, layers, and textures. But did you know that you can get the same kind of experience even while standing in a deep hole? Soil horizons are the distinct layers in the ground beneath us that develop over time, formed through an interaction of climate, organisms, organic and inorganic material, and topology. If you want to grow something or understand why something is growing as well as it is, knowing about soil horizons can be mighty useful. In fact, knowing about soil is so important there is even a government agency just for it – the Canadian Soil Information Service!

General advice:

• For any topic in soil horizons, you would be best to start out learning about soil horizons. There are standardized categories of the soil layers to be found, and a lot to read about each layer.

Possible topics include:

• Research and explain what the different, commonly recognized soil horizons are
  • To which layers do the roots of different types of vegetation usually reach?
  • How could someone improve their own soil by learning this information?
  • A plexiglass container that shows layering of soil would be a great addition to any presentation!
• Research and analyze the composition of the soil right beneath your feet
  • If the ground outside is frozen, you might want to move on.
  • What layers can you identify? How deep do they go? What kind of plants are growing there, and can you explain why based on the soil horizons you’ve found?
  • After discovering your soil local horizon profile, can you explain why it is the way it is?
• Develop a soil management plan to help enhance soil fertility and microbial activity
  • If you, someone in your family, or a friend or neighbour is an avid gardener, come up with a plan that will help enhance soil fertility without too much additional work or cost.
  • Create a fictional crop farmer and design a plan for them that’ll enhance growing conditions, reduce required inputs, and build soil health. You could also do this for a real farmer, but keep in mind that not everyone is eager to hear how someone else thinks they could be doing a job better!

 

Curiosity and Ingenuity

A project that helps improve our understanding or addresses a problem in an area of STEM not covered by the other challenges.

 

Dog scent detection

With their highly sensitive noses, K9s help their human friends find things in a wide-range of situations – from drugs to earthquake survivors, from cancer to whale poop. As helpful as they are, dogs haven’t been very open about just how much they can smell and how finely they can distinguish between smells. Scientists continue to be surprised what dogs can detect, and if you take on a dog scent detection project maybe you can be surprised too!

Possible topics include:

• Explore what your own dog can find with their nose
  • Focus on the “edges” of their ability, for example, maybe your dog could find your hairbrush wrapped in a bag and hidden in the cupboard, but couldn’t find your hairbrush in the fridge.
  • Try to account for all the different factors that could help or hinder your dog’s nose: wind strength and direction, presence of distractions, similar-smelling items nearby, etc.
  • You’ll want to do serious research into the best way to teach your dog scent detection. Any dog can do it, you just have to work out how to let your dog know what you want.
    • Pick a target object and teach your dog to sit when they find it. Once they can do that reliably, start trying to cover up the scent of that object more and more. At what point is your dog no longer able to locate the item?
    • Having said all this, have a plan in case your dog just doesn’t want to play along. Maybe you can find someone else with a dog that knows scent detection, you and a couple of friends could all try to teach your own dogs to increase the likelihood one dog will learn, or, be prepared to just have a project based on theory (no actual dog locating items).
  • Make sure there’s “science” to go along with this science project: You could include information about the sensitivity of the dog olfactory system, research how “smells” disperse in different types of environments, etc.
• Invent dog detection games that teach and reinforce the skill
  • Any dog can find things with their nose, but the reason high energy dogs are usually considered the best for scent detection is because any other dog will get bored finding silly human things all day. For this project you can get inside the head of the average dog to try to figure out ways to make finding boring human things more fun.
  • Example (which already exists): “Pop boxes” are box inserts that are spring-loaded with a tennis ball and are remote controlled. A dog is shown several similar-looking boxes, one of which contains the pop box and scent target. When the dog indicates the right box – POP! – a tennis ball shoots out. Ohmygoodness finding things is the best!
  • Since this is a science project, make sure you’re considering sciencey details – like what dogs find rewarding and why they find it rewarding.
• Discover a unique training method for teaching a dog to do scent detection
  • While doing research or teaching your dog scent, you may come across a method for teaching scent detection that hasn’t been tried before.
  • Understand your method better by trying slight variations and researching the science behind why the method might work as well as it does.
  • Share your discovery with others by creating a guide.
  • Example: You might discover that your dog is capable of learning by imitation. If your dog observes another dog being trained to perform a task and receive a reward, your dog may start attempting to do the same thing.

 

Intense ocean pressure

It is said that only 5% of Earth’s Ocean has been explored. One reason for that small number is the shear depth of many parts of the ocean. Miles underwater, the pressure of all that water above is so intense that even incredibly strong vessels and materials can be crushed. With so little known about our oceans, discovering new ways of exploration could be a challenge that’s not out of your depth! Taking on this challenge could help others uncover new species, parts of our lost history, and further our understanding of the planet we call home.

General advice:

• Make sure you understand how atmospheric pressure works, and the pressure conditions that exist underwater. There are likely to be aspects that will surprise you!

Possible topics include:

• Experiment with different vessel shapes to see which stand up best under pressure
  • Spoiler – it’s probably a sphere. You’re going to want to go a bit deeper and start considering suitability of different shapes to human considerations. Is a particular shape easy to make? Will it be efficient for fitting people and cargo? Perhaps it’s weak on its own, but particularly strong with simple support beams.
  • Try making some prototypes, but you might have to get inventive since water-tight containers that are precisely shaped might not be easy to make.
    • My single idea on this: Make the shape with paper-mâché, then wrap it in saran wrap for waterproofness. You’ll probably need to tape the saran wrap seams.
  • Be mindful about what you claim regarding how your test conditions relate to real-world conditions. For example, if you’re using a rain barrel to test your designs, what does it mean if your prototype doesn’t implode at the bottom of the barrel?
    • I don’t have the answer to that question. My suggestion would be to intentionally make prototypes that fail before they reach the bottom of your water tank/pool/lake. Then you could compare your designs to one another: “Prototype A collapsed at 1.4 meters, but prototype B collapsed at 2.1 meters, therefore prototype B is stronger.”
  • There is a lot of room to make this as simple or complex as you’d like. From “here are shapes and a graph comparing how well they stood up” to “here are the compressive strengths of various metals and a calculation to show my test tank is a 1/64th scale replica of real conditions.”
• Research the use of novel materials and designs
  • Metal seems popular, but it comes with some drawbacks like expense and it’s probably difficult to work with. Are there any materials that are easier to work with, maybe even cheaper too?
  • Consider the use of a clever design that allows a seemingly weak material to act as reinforcement – like the way cardboard box walls are made stronger by having a wavy paper inside.
• Create a prototype deep-sea exploration vehicle
  • Maybe don’t go so big that you’ll be tempted to get in it. However, by constructing a model that is sufficiently large for experimentation, you can explore the underlying physics involved in the submersion and resurfacing of submarines. Additionally, you can observe firsthand the points at which failures occur as pressure increases.
• Perform an analysis of an existing design or technique for deep sea vessels and evaluate how safe – or unsafe – they may be
  • Do some quick web searches to see if any deep-sea diving expeditions went awry lately. Try to understand the properties of the materials used in the submarine, how they failed, and try to find ways that design could have been improved.

 

Optical illusions

Optical illusions may not look like serious business, but by understanding what’s behind the illusion you can learn a lot of important things about how light behaves and how the mind works. Researching the behaviour of light can prepare you for a wide range of fields, like communications where fibre optics move data around the world, self-driving cars that use LiDAR for range finding, or the renewable energy industry where the properties of light are exploited to create ever-more-efficient solar panels. But optical illusions aren’t just all light, there’s the matter of how our brain interprets what it sees based on things like expectations, perspective, or motion.

And magic tricks. You might be able to learn some magic tricks.

Possible topics include:

• Pick your favourite optical illusion and dig into how it works, writing an explanation that others will be able to understand.
  • Example: Search for “Fata Morgana.” Research the different conditions necessary to cause this mirage and understand what they do to light. Can you recreate this mirage?
• Explain what cognitive biases play a role in an effective optical illusion
  • Example: The Ebbinghaus illusion causes two circles of the same size to look like they’re very different sizes by surrounding one circle with several small circles. This illusion takes advantage of our brain’s use of the surrounding context to estimate size.
  • Why is our brain trying to take these shortcuts? In what situations do these biases work in our favour?

 

Unconventional buildings

Wood, steel, and concrete appear to be the common building materials where I live. Does that mean they’re the best? In earlier times there was a large variety of building materials used: Stone, sod, adobe (“earth”), strawbales. In modern times there are “modern” material alternatives too, like tires with rammed earth, cross-laminated timber, or 3D-printed homes! Taking on a project in this category can put you right at the intersection of climate change and housing – two very hot topics!

Possible topics include:

• Select one unconventional building material or method and do a deep dive on how it works and why it might be the material/method of the future.
  • Example: Rammed earth – Is it a good insulator for hot and cold weather? Are pests a problem? Can any “earth” be used, or will a special kind need to be brought in?
    • If you wanted a portable prototype you could look into using the tires from a small toy, although you’re going to need lots. Instead, you could use a stand-in “tire,” like cutting cross-sections of cans that you then fill with earth.
  • Pick one theme – like cost, energy efficiency, disaster-resilience, etc – and use that as a lens through which to perform a survey of current unconventional building materials
    • Example: Choosing disaster-resilience, I’d compile a list of suitable building materials for my area, then consider the types of natural disasters a building here would encounter.
      • How have wood-framed buildings with vinyl siding fared against wildfire or tornadoes in the past? What properties do other materials have that might make them better/worse?
      • A strawbale home might be resilient against high winds and hail, but maybe my area is too humid, and mold will be an issue.
    • This would be a great opportunity for a table of the options, with rows comparing the traits of each.
    • You could conclude by making a recommendation for a material or construction method that is worth further research.
  • Design a building that you believe is ideally suited for your area
    • Your design will have to originate from extensive research on into the specific needs of your area and the alternative construction methods and materials available.
    • This will likely be an “on paper” design. Search for drawing tools that will let you communicate your design ideas effectively and easily.
    • With an emphasis on “suited for your area,” consider materials that are locally plentiful, but also suitable for their purpose.
    • Compare your building against a traditionally built building. Consider things like cost, ease of construction, suitability to changing climate, etc.

 

Waves

Ocean waves? Yes. Radio waves? Yes. Sound and light waves? Yes, and maybe… Waves exhibit some interesting and unintuitive properties, and many of those properties are the same across many different types of waves. Waves can interact to combine or cancel one another out, a property that your multi-antennae Wi-Fi router may be using right now to direct a signal precisely to your device. They can be used to monitor the weather and to tell how fast your car is going. Many of these waves are very difficult to see, but since they share many of the same properties you can experiment and understand all of them better by using a medium that’s easy to see and manipulate – water! Studying and building an intuition for wave properties and their behaviour can help you better grasp the hidden world of waves that are being used all around us.

General advice:

• Regardless of the wave sub-topic you choose, you’ll want to know the basics, like amplitude, wavelength, frequency, period, and phase.

Possible topics include:

• Recreate wave-interaction phenomena, like reflection, diffraction, interference, and standing waves.
  • You could build your own wave tank, or a much simpler “ripple tank” (which is just a tray of water). There is also this “Ripple Tank Simulation” which allows you to modify many wave parameters, add obstacles, and more: https://www.falstad.com/ripple/
  • Research how these wave phenomena happen and start to think about what conditions you need to recreate them. Can you move beyond trial and error to knowing exactly what kind of waves you need to generate to create your desired wave(s)?
  • Make sure you’re not just making cool waves, and that you’re researching the mechanics behind the scenes.
• Build a wave tank that can simulate different wave forms
  • Make sure you’re able to build a tank that can generate waves that originate from at least two sides.
  • Recreate some wave-interaction phenomena, as discussed in the project above.
  • Switch out the water for a thinner or thicker fluid and note how wave propagation changes
• Research and explain how information can be encoded on to “carrier waves”
  • Radio signals transmit information on electromagnetic carrier waves – a continuous radio wave that is slightly modified by the sender in such a way that information can be encoded in the carrier wave.
  • Understand the basics of this data transmission technique and come up with a way to explain it to others who haven’t spent the time you have studying the topic.
  • Go deeper and look at the progression of data encoding techniques that have evolved since radio waves were used for long-distance communication in the early 1900s.
  • Consider a demonstration using another form of wave, such as with a rope, ripple tank, or sound (through voice). Create a basic encoding scheme that maps small changes in a carrier wave to a particular meaning, then let people try to communicate with one another by replicating those small changes.
    • This might be hard to do well.

 

Digital Technology

A project that helps improve our quality of life or transforms existing products and services through digital devices, methods or systems.

 

Forecast vehicle traffic

The compelling aspect of forecasting (vehicle) traffic is that it allows you make a positive impact on something we all must deal with by utilizing lots of interesting technology and techniques. For example, did you know that most Bluetooth-enabled devices constantly transmit their presence as their owners just go about their daily life? Tapping into this invisible source of information could allow you to detect how many Bluetooth-enabled devices go whizzing past your house throughout the day, and from that, estimate the level of traffic. With a sense for traffic patterns, you can investigate routing algorithms that reduce traffic congestions or minimize vehicle idling.

Time to start optimizing – help people get to where they’re going more efficiently and pick up skills that apply to much more than just vehicle traffic.

Possible topics include:

• Design what you believe is the best method for students to measure vehicle or pedestrian traffic
  • The outcome of your project will be to help future student researchers measure traffic, allowing their work to build off your work.
  • Bluetooth beacons were mentions above, but there are numerous ways you can estimate the volume of traffic: optical sensors, ambient noise, a simple sampling technique where an individual counts the number of cars they see at an infrequent interval, or a mechanical counter that is driven across (make sure this is legal and safe!)
  • Whatever method you come up with will likely be an estimate. To lend more credibility to your method you’ll want to compare an estimated number to an actual number obtained by manual counting. Or check to see if your town already has a method for counting vehicles you can compare your estimate against.
• Deploy traffic sensors, collecting sensor data into a real-time reporting system
  • This real-time reporting system would most likely be an app or website with code to collect and display incoming information.
  • Can you make a system that will tell a daily commuter whether their usual route to work is currently busy? Can it provide “time to destination” forecasts?
  • Consider collecting feedback from users who are experiencing traffic conditions first-hand. This information could be used to calibrate your traffic estimates.
• Create a proposal for your town or city to change their traffic light timing to optimize traffic flow
  • On busy roads, traffic lights are often timed to optimize traffic flow. However, you may find that you often feel like you’re hitting all the red lights. Reverse engineer the timing of the traffic lights on a busy road to determine how – if at all – they’re set up to keep cars moving.
  • Are lights changing at constant intervals? Do they seem synchronized with one-another in any way? Does this timing change depend on the time of day or day of the week?
  • Keep an eye out for lights that change based on the presence of a vehicle. Do these types of lights help or hurt the overall flow of traffic?

 

Porch (and sky!) pirates

A “porch pirate” is someone who steals mailed packages that have been left on a doorstep. With more people shopping online and promises of wheeled robots and flying drones delivering our mail, package piracy may not be limited to porches for long! Arrrr you ready to apply your ingenuity and some high-tech tools to keep packages safe?

Possible topics include:

• Design a package lockbox that will easily accept packages, but not as easily release them
  • Engineering has lots in common with science, but if you take this project on make sure you’re including science content.
  • Example: Reverse engineer the barcodes that Amazon (or other companies) put on their packages, then only unlock the box when an expected package is delivered.
  • Remember that the delivery person is probably in a hurry, so your lockbox needs to be easy to use.
• Repurpose a Bluetooth tracking tag that can be integrated into a package, then activated when certain events occur
  • This would be a solution implemented by the shipping company.
  • Example: The integrated tracker is turned on when the package gets too far away from a magnetic switch. If the tracker is turned on before the package’s “delivered” status is set, it will start broadcasting its location. This will work well for handling interception of wheeled robot or drone deliveries.
  • Inexpensive Bluetooth tracking tags include Apple AirTag, and Tile. GPS-based trackers exist for a range of prices. For something much more unique, search for “LoRa” trackers, which utilize low frequency, long-distance radio communication.
• Design a system that gives advanced warning of sky-based threats through auditory drone detection
  • Drones make a distinctive noise that can often be heard well before they can be seen. For this project you would design a system of two or more microphones that would attempt to detect when a drone was nearby.
  • Search for existing research on drone detection, as well as “acoustic location” or “triangulating sound.”
  • To do this, it’s likely you’ll need a micro controller like a Raspberry Pi Pico or Arduino.

 

Self-driving cars

Self-driving cars are actually here! Well, not here, but in places like California and Arizona companies like Waymo and Cruise are picking up paying passengers in cars and inching them toward their destinations in a student-driver-like fashion. More questionably, companies like Tesla are selling “self-driving” features in their advanced cars, but the jury is out on how self-driving they are. Nevertheless, the era of autonomous cars is beginning to emerge, and you can be in the driver’s seat of this era! Or, take the lead from the passenger seat and let the car drive.

Possible topics include:

• Create your own self-driving car using a toy car and basic sensors
  • Get out the Arduino, motors, and sensors and get first-hand experience with what it takes to build a car that can get around on its own
  • Pre-made kits exist to build this exact thing, but you can go lower-tech and fit a remote-control car with basic sensors too.
• Research the ethical dilemmas and decision-making algorithms that will direct self-driving cars
  • Everyone is very worried about who a car would hit if it somehow had to choose. Figure out why this worries people and how likely the imagine scenario is.
  • What kind of liability might self-driving car companies have if their cars injure or kill people? Do you think the current thoughts on this are fair?
  • While true self-driving cars are still very new, companies like Waymo and Cruise have been releasing data on traffic incidents. Can you work out whether self-driving cars are safer than the average driver from this data?
• Consider the near-future where self-driving cars coordinate their actions by being networked with one another and how that might change our transportation system.
  • What are the traffic problems facing us now, with a bunch of meat-based drivers at the wheel? Which of these problems are resolved with cars that drive themselves? Can more be solved with self-driving cars that work cooperatively?
  • Our roads, road infrastructure, and traffic laws have all been designed for human drivers. Can you re-imagine our transportation system, designed primarily for autonomous vehicles?
• Develop a decision-making algorithm that a self-driving car (or cars) could use to improve traffic, safety, or some other important metric
  • One of the criticisms of self-driving cars is that they follow the rules of the road exactly, and because human drivers don’t expect this, accidents can occur. Can you construct an algorithm that allows a self-driving car to act a little more natural?
  • Your algorithm (a sequence of precise rules for solving a problem) doesn’t have to be written in code, it could also be written in English. You could construct a closed driving course for people to use, then have them drive by following your algorithm. A flowchart or similar would help people find the appropriate instructions for the situation they’re in.
  • I’m not aware of any self-driving cars that have navigated winter roads where conditions are slippery, road lines and signs can be obscured, and it’s easy to become stuck. You could build your algorithm to guide a car through a Canadian winter.

 

Smart dog door

A door is something a dog is always on the wrong side of. Worse, not many dogs know how to open one (let alone close it). As a dog owner, this situation can be ruff. Time to get out the toolbox, sensors, and motors and make a smart dog door! What makes it smart? That’s up to you, but consider the difference your ingenious door could make in the lives of dogs across Canada as they wonder how they managed before your smart door showed up.

Possible topics include:

• Prototype a dog door that can be opened remotely
  • You could use a home automation phone app, a garage door opener, or something similar.
  • Use a microphone and a small micro-controller like an Arduino to open the dog door when a fire alarm is heard.
• Research whether a dog can be trained to operate a smart dog door
  • Again, what makes the door smart is up to you. Your door may not open unless the dog barks first or pushes a button.
  • You’re faced with a second challenge of trying to train a dog now. See the project idea “Dog scent detection” under Curiosity and Ingenuity for some comments on dog training and being prepared in case training doesn’t work out.
• Create a technical method for – and maybe even implement – telling apart dogs from other animals.
  • Fido? Unlock. Racoon? Lock!
  • How? Simple cameras that can be integrated with inexpensive computers, like the Raspberry Pi, could be used. There is also software available that can help you detect objects seen in a picture.
  • There are other options. Some that come to mind: Use a scale that will cause the door to open if the animal on the other side is the expected weight; put a low-powered Bluetooth device on your dog’s collar that a sensor near the door can detect; Bark recognition?

 

Where’s the Wi-Fi?

Wi-Fi needs no introduction. Neither do the struggles we all face when our devices can’t just seem to get a good connection. But, what’s the deal with this invisible giver of internet? Why do you sometimes have a seemingly full-strength connection, yet your videos keep buffering? Why does the microwave sometimes cause your connection to drop? What can we do to better understand something that can’t be seen?

 

Better understand this staple of modern life – and maybe help others along the way – with the first-world problem of Wi-Fi coverage.

General advice:

• You’ll want to understand key terms, like “Received signal strength indicator” (RSSI) and dBm (decibel-milliwatts), but also some key concepts, such as the difference between 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies.

Possible topics include:

• Map Wi-Fi signal strength inside – and outside – your house
  • You could write a report or make a presentation that helps others understand how a wireless signal propagates through space, possibly including tips and/or technical information.
  • Search for apps that run on your phone or laptop that can report Wi-Fi signal strength. Potential options include NetSpot or WiFiman.
  • What kind of obstacles have the biggest impact on signal strength?
• Investigate the relationship between signal strength and signal quality
  • Why doesn’t “full bars” always mean “full speed ahead”?
  • You’ll want to pair in-the-field experimentation with research for this, as there can be multiple reasons for this phenomenon.
  • Some hints:
    • Consider how many Wi-Fi networks you can see from your house and using tool like NetSpot or WiFiman (from above), look at how they’re spread across different channels. How do the access points on the same channel share that channel?
    • How do you think signal strength might differ when it originates from your home router versus something small and battery-powered, like your phone?
  • Create an interactive tool or guide that helps people better place their router and troubleshoot Wi-Fi problems
    • Provide tips on what to do and what to avoid
    • A step-by-step troubleshooting guide is always appreciated
    • For some added authority, include technical details on why you make the recommendations that you do

 

Disease and Illness

A project that helps enhance our diagnosis, treatment or understanding of disease, or the management of physical or mental illness.

 

Cognitive training

Our brain’s functioning can deteriorate due to certain health problems, or simply because of age. Called “cognitive decline,” this may look like a person becoming more forgetful, struggling to pay attention, or losing some of their language skills. Several years ago (as my aging brain recalls) “brain training” apps were popular, marketing themselves as tools that could help prevent or reverse cognitive decline. The argument is that our brain’s natural ability to rewire itself (called neural plasticity) can be exploited through regular challenges that target the brain functions we wish to preserve.

Is the science there to back up these claims? If you choose to research this area you could help yourself and others slow cognitive decline, or help people not waste their time.

Possible topics include:

• Conduct your own study to see if you can detect an increase in cognitive performance due to brain training.
  • First, you’ll need to find one or more brain-training apps or techniques to use.
  • Second, you’ll have to decide what brain function you wish to test. It’s best to pick one that can be objectively measured. For instance, “level of happiness” might be hard to compare day-to-day or across different people, but “ability to remember word/picture pairs” can be much more easily compared.
  • For cognitive performance metrics that you believe improved with training, do some research to understand the mechanisms at work that allowed brain training help.
• Perform a survey of existing research to come to your own conclusion of brain training effectiveness
  • Lots of research is likely to exist on the topic, lots of which you can probably find on the websites of companies selling brain training products (be aware of bias!)
  • Before you start, be sure to read about the process of conducting a survey of research.
    • In this context, a “survey” means to review and analyze what has been previously written about the topic.
  • You’ll conclude with an analysis of what the existing research says about the matter and summarize your findings.
• Create your own brain training regimen
  • Through research and first-hand tests, decide which brain functions can be improved with training, and what exercises are most effective for it.
  • You could create a written guide, your own app, or website.
  • Include the science behind why your training methods can work.

 

Detecting disease in the population

In the context of public health, monitoring for the presence and progression of an illness as it spreads through a population can be a literal matter of life and death. Early detection allows for a quicker response to prepare and contain the spread of the identified illness. Ongoing tracking can help public health officials allocate resources, detect patterns, and understand whether preventative measures have been effective. COVID-19, H1N1, SARS, and MERS – to name only four pandemics of the 21^st century – show that the stakes are high, and the need exists for public health officials to have as much information as possible. Can you help them out?

Possible topics include:

• Conduct a survey of existing and emerging methods of detecting contagious illnesses in a population
  • How do we know when a new contagious disease is spreading in our community, country, or around the globe?
  • Which methods are used and in which situations? Is there agreement on these methods? Has COVID-19 changed any of this?
  • How do the different methods function? Be sure to compare and contrast the methods with one another.
• Conduct an in-depth study on the use of wastewater for monitoring the prevalence of a contagious diseases
  • How is it done, where is it done, and has it proven effective?
  • Since this is a science fair project, make sure you wade-in to the technical details of how this method works.
• Perform your own “postmortem” on the local government’s monitoring of the spread of COVID-19, connecting shortcomings you identify to the monitoring methods used.
  • A postmortem isn’t necessarily a medical term and can generally be taken to mean “so, what went wrong here and how can we make sure it doesn’t happen again?”
  • How did the methods used to track the progression of COVID-19 change over time? Is there a consensus on how accurate infection estimates were?
  • What have others said about how monitoring should/could have been done differently?
  • With the benefit of hindsight, which detection methods do you think would have been best to use during the pandemic?
  • Do you believe the outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic in Alberta would been different had better/worse infection detection taken place?

 

Fall prevention

For you young people with quick reflexes and rubbery bones, falls usually result in just a little embarrassment and maybe a cracked phone screen. But as people age, eyesight worsens, bones become more brittle, reflexes are less sharp, and there’s reduced muscle mass to shield the body from impacts. Getting old is rough business and falls can be particularly hazardous. Help more people live happier, longer lives by taking on this hazard.

Possible topics include:

• Create a household safety guide for those who want to “fall-proof” their home
  • Find existing research on the most common cause of falls in the home and the current methods that exist to reduce those risks.
  • If you start from a place of assuming a fall is inevitable, research existing products or techniques that exist to reduce the chance of injury.
  • Write your guide based on the most current research and be sure you can back up your recommendations.
• Invent your own fall safety product or technique
  • An air bag that inflates when it detects its wearer is falling, for example. Unfortunately, someone has already had this idea, but maybe you can improve upon it.
  • Technique example: Design a senior “fall training class” where seniors are trained in safer ways to fall and taught ways they can get themselves back up.

 

Gamify good habits

Sometimes (often) the things we know we should do we just don’t want to do. Brains, amirite? But being better at doing those “things we just don’t want to do” has a lot of overlap with “disease and illness”: Exercising more, eating healthier, following your doctor’s advice, taking medication on time, etc. Gamifying tasks offers the possibility of outsmarting our own brains by making things that aren’t fun a little bit more fun. For example, try to take out the trash today faster than you did yesterday, or have a bite of chocolate for every page of your textbook you read.

 

Discover how this technique works, find new ways of putting it to use, and help others understand how they too can trick themselves into doing things they don’t want to do.

Possible topics include:

• Gather and test a list of gamification techniques on yourself and friends
  • Decide what undesirable tasks you’ll be using for your test and try to ensure these tasks are equally undesirable across all gamification techniques.
  • How will you tell the difference between your early enthusiasm contributing to more tasks being completed and the effectiveness of the techniques you’re testing?
    • Similarly, as you reach the end of your project, you may not feel like doing many tasks at all. How will you ensure that doesn’t reflect poorly on the techniques you’re testing near the end of your project.
  • Test the effectiveness of different categories of techniques
    • Start by deciding how the different techniques can be categorized. For instance, “food-based” could be one category, “personal satisfaction” another (in the case of “can I beat my best time?”)
    • How can you decide which categories motivate you best? How can you decide for other people?
    • Do some techniques work best only for certain tasks?
  • Build a prototype gamification system that helps others get their unpleasant tasks done
    • Look at the existing gamification apps that exist to get a sense for how they’re making mundane tasks more exciting. Can you do better?
    • This doesn’t have to be “app-based,” it could be a board game, a point-based buddy system, or anything else that helps a person turn unpleasant tasks into fun ones.

 

Home-made smoke filter

Smoke from wildfires has become increasingly common over the summer and for those with respiratory problems this can mean days or weeks locked inside and being short of breath. Commercial air purifiers can be expensive and may not be available for purchase when needed the most.

 

Perhaps you can ignite some innovation in the area of purifying smoky indoor air by figuring out how Canadians can build their own air purifiers. The solution may be hazy now, but if you succeed, you could make a positive health and financial impact for those who suffer from smoky air.

Possible topics include:

• Design and test your own smoke filter
  • Consider what materials people might have at home that are suitable for filtering air.
  • What quantitative ways can you use to measure effectiveness of your filter (“quantitative” meaning using precise numbers, rather than “seemed less smoky to me”)
  • If you come up with a good design, consider making a guide to help others build their own
• Research existing home air purification methods, understanding how the “smoke” part is removed from the air
  • Sometimes it can smell smoky but not look like it. Other times it looks smoky but doesn’t smell like it. What is happening at the microscopic level, and are all air filters equally good at removing the combustion byproducts out of the air?
  • Dig into the research so you can help others understand.
• Create a novel smoke filter testing method that others can use to assess filter effectiveness
  • Can you come up with a method of determining how effective an air filter is at filtering smoke in a way that’s repeatable no matter who is doing the measurement?
  • What you’re looking to avoid are subjective measurements – ones that depend mostly on the person doing the measuring.
  • When assessing air filters, we’d like to be more objective in our assessments – based more on something that can be measured.

 

Energy

A project that helps improve our use of current energy sources, enables the transition to alternative energy sources, or reduces our energy footprint.

 

Battery chemistry

Batteries come in different sizes, like AA or a 9V battery, but did you know they also come in different types of chemistry? Batteries create electricity by cleverly mixing specific chemical and mineral concoctions, causing electrons to flow from one battery terminal to another. Example battery chemistries include “lithium iron phosphate,” “lithium polymer,” and “nickel manganese cobalt” – and these are just under the “lithium” category of batteries! Consider how important batteries are in our world today, from powering tiny electronics to moving boats and trucks – it’s shocking! Understanding more about the chemistry of batteries can shed light on how far we’ve come, and how far we must go, to electrify our world.

General advice:

• A required starting place for any research in battery chemistry is to understand how chemical reactions can produce electricity. That will also require you understand that electricity is the movement of electrons from one place to another.

Possible topics include:

• Compare and contrast the properties of different types of AA battery
  • Take a survey of the different chemistries AA batteries come in. If you’re planning to perform some hands-on tests, make a note of whether they can be easily bought.
  • Research the chemical and mineral content that make up each type of battery and understand why those specific components make for a good battery.
  • For what types of tasks are each chemistry well-suited for? Keep the “best battery” isn’t always just the “longest lasting” or the one with the most power.
  • Consider expanding to more exotic chemistries, depending on your interests, time, and what you find.
• Choose a battery chemistry and research how it produces power
  • Understand, then explain to your audience, why the chemicals and minerals were chosen. What properties does this give the battery type?
  • Give some thought to the chemistry you choose – if there’s one you could make yourself, that might be an interesting pick. Or a chemistry that seems like it could really represent a breakthrough if only one piece could be figured out (Lithium-Air, perhaps).
• Map the battery chemistry landscape via a comparison of key battery characteristics
  • This might be hard to do! I imagine you’d end up with a carefully thought-out map that grouped battery chemistries by select properties. You could then research/explain how those properties contribute to the properties of the batteries themselves. Or you could highlight how/where the different components are mined.
  • You’ll want to start by compiling a list of all the different battery types you can find; then consider how you might group them together.
  • Example: Group by chemical. Under “Nickel” you’d have: Ni-Cd, Ni-MH, Mi-Zn, Ni-Fe, Ni-H2. But you’ll have to handle overlap, as there are several different kinds of batteries that use Iron (Fe).
• Make your own battery
  • Safety first, of course, but battery making doesn’t need to be high-tech. You can start with a search for the “Baghdad Battery” – possibly one of the earliest known batteries.

 

The electricity grid

Electricity is generated at power plants, brought up to high voltages to be sent over power lines near your home, where the voltage is brought down again and fed into your house; this is tricky business. Yet, most of the time the power company succeeds as we have access to consistent, reliable power. However, some dark clouds loom for this idyllic picture of power distribution: the carbon emissions that coal, natural gas, and other non-renewable power sources generate are under increased scrutiny as the effects of global warming begin to be felt. Even ignoring costs, renewable energy isn’t a slam-dunk as most renewable power sources only work intermittently – like when the wind is blowing, or the sun is shining – but this doesn’t always work well with the “always-on” power grid we’ve come to expect. The stakes are high considering the importance of reliable electricity in our daily lives, so let’s learn more about the electric grid and understand these challenges it currently faces.

General advice:

• For Alberta-specific information, check out the Alberta Electric System Operator’s (AESO) website: https://www.aeso.ca/
• Regarding what the future Alberta power grid might look like, see the AESO’s page “The Future of Electricity in Alberta” (https://www.aeso.ca/future-of-electricity/)

Possible topics include:

• Investigate how the electric grid can meet the needs of variable electricity demand
  • For the most part, electricity isn’t stored, so the amount of electricity generated needs to match demand exactly. How is that done? What happens when demand is greater than supply?
  • Possible project titles for this might be: “Exploring the flexibility of the electric grid,” “Evaluating grid stability,” or “Load balancing on the electric grid.”
  • Look for examples where electric grids failed, or nearly failed, to meet demand. For instance, search for the February 2021 power outages that occurred in Texas, or the 2003 Northeast power outage.
  • With this project there’s the potential to make small models that demonstrate key aspects of how the power grid responds to demand. Be safe!
• Research how renewable energy projects are currently integrated into our electric grid
  • How are renewable electricity sources (most of which operate intermittently) being integrated into the power grid (which must operate continuously)?
  • Is there a limit to how much intermittent renewable power can be added to an electric grid? What are the factors that determine this? What can be done to increase this limit?
  • Can you come up with less common approaches to overcoming the problems of renewable energy integration with the power grid?
• Propose a grid-management strategy that allows us to maximize the use of renewable energy
  • With existing technology, we can’t transition to a 100% renewable power grid. Why not? Can you draw up a plan that proposes what mix of renewable and non-renewable power sources might maximize the use of renewable energy?
  • Consider the role a highly interconnected grid could play in a transition to renewable power.
• Create a model electricity grid to simulate the issue of intermittent power sources on grid reliability
  • You’ll want to be sure to understand the relationship between volts, amps, and watts.
  • Our grid is AC power, but for simplicity and safety, consider using DC.

 

Methane and natural gas

Methane is a greenhouse gas with an 84- to 87-times greater warming effect than CO2 over a 20-year period. During the production and delivery of natural gas methane is both intentionally and unintentionally vented. How much is released? We don’t know. Whoops. But this is an area with increasingly active research, as there are now tools being built and satellites launched that can detect the release of methane into the atmosphere. Don’t look around sheepishly wondering who is releasing methane, roll up your sleeves and and scientifically prove it!

Possible topics include:

• Research the available methods for detecting the presence of methane at a distance and how they work
  • There are numerous ways to detect methane, but only a few for doing so at a distance. How do those methods work? Are they accurate? What kind of industry changes have occurred – if any – because of being able to detect methane from a distance?
  • This may ruin the surprise, but in this project, you’ll likely learn about the wavelengths that make up light and how different gasses absorb some wavelengths but not others.
• Compile a list of all the places and ways methane escapes during the production and delivery of natural gas
  • The place to start with this project is finding out how natural gas is extracted, refined, and delivered. Depending on the number of different ways this happens, you may want to limit yourself to just one method.
  • It has long been understood that the extraction of natural gas results in the escape of methane, but only recently has attention turned towards the amount of methane that escapes during the distribution of natural gas. Is there agreement on all the places methane escapes, and in what amount?
  • To start your research, search for “Fugitive emissions”
  • What is known about the release of methane in countries where that kind of information isn’t provided?
• Provide your own calculation for how environmentally friendly natural gas is, incorporating the latest information about methane release
  • This project will involve a lot of research. You’ll need to find current estimates of the “carbon intensity” of natural gas, determine what factors were included in that estimate, then investigate what others have written about un- or under-reported methane emissions.
  • “Carbon intensity” would be a good search term for comparing the greenness of different power sources. For one source look for “Technology-specific Cost and Performance Parameters” in Annex III of the IPCC Climate Change 2014
    • You should find that the IPCC estimated Natural Gas to have a carbon intensity of 490g C0₂eq/kWh. For comparison, they estimate coal at 820g C0₂eq/kWh and Biomass at 230g C0₂eq/kWh.
  • Propose techniques for reducing, or better measuring, the release of methane
    • Find out where methane escapes into the atmosphere, what has been done to prevent it, and what more could be done.
    • It’s also worthwhile to research and report on how the situation could be better understood, as you can’t improve something until you can measure it.

 

Solar oven

In poorer countries, the use of wood or charcoal for cooking poses a serious health risk for those using the polluting fuel, but also for the population in the larger area. Even in countries like Canada, the use of Natural Gas for cooking contributes to poor indoor air quality and higher rates of childhood asthma. However, cooking our food isn’t the only way the planet could benefit from solar-heated ovens. Natural gas and coal are used almost exclusively to heat material to high temperatures in industries like glass manufacturing, steel and metal production, and cement production. If you can help discover a more effective way to utilize solar energy, it could lead to a substantial reduction in the burning of fossil fuels.

Possible topics include:

• Build a solar oven and assess how well it works
  • Conduct some research to get an idea of what materials you should use
  • What will this oven be used for? If it’s for cooking, you’ll want to be able to maintain a steady temperature.
  • Make sure you have a plan for measuring how well your oven is working. You might want a way to measure the temperature inside the oven without opening it. You may also want to compare the temperature difference between the inside and outside of the oven, as even on a cloudy day comparing the temperature difference might tell you just how efficient your oven is.
• Build a solar oven with integrated technology. Ideas include:
  • Maximize your oven’s utilization of sunlight throughout the day without you needing to do anything.
  • Include sensors that will vent the oven to maintain a preset temperature
  • Include an electric heating element that will turn on in order to maintain a preset temperature, even if it gets cloudy or dark.
• Design a solar oven suitable for extremely high temperatures
  • Cement production, as an example, requires kilns operating at temperatures of 1,400 – 1,500 degrees Celsius. Research how temperatures that high can be reached using the sun alone. Solar collection via many mirrors might be one example.
  • Consider the addition of a heat-storage facility so that your oven can operate even after the sun has gone down.

 

Thermal insulation

Insulation is really simple: it keeps the warm things warm and the cold things cold by resisting the transfer of heat. Please collect your degree on thermal insulation on your way out.

 

No, wait, there’s a lot more to it than that! To start, (the concept of) insulation is used everywhere – it’s used to stop spacecraft re-entering Earth’s atmosphere from being incinerated and helps prevent hot/cold cycles from cracking roads by separating the Earth from the asphalt. In the winter it keeps your coffee hot and your hands warm. Or, in the summer, your house cool and ice cream frozen. Insulation is the unsung hero in this era of concern over energy efficiency and being “green.” Get wrapped up in a sneakily interesting topic and learn all the reasons and places that we might want to keep “hot” and “cold” apart.

Possible topics include:

• Learn what makes a good thermal insulator, then perform some hands-on tests to put theory into practice
  • What kind of properties do common insulating materials have?
  • What kind of insulation is used in one application (perhaps, travel mugs), but not others (like in your walls)?
  • Is there such a thing as a “perfect” insulator, that doesn’t allow any heat transfer?
• Build a model house that is as insulated as you think would be economically possible at full scale
  • How is the efficiency of house insulation measured?
  • What parts of a house tend to be the least well insulated in real life?
  • To increase the difficulty, investigate the most economically viable ways to maximize the insulation of an existing house (rather than for houses to be built)
• Propose new places insulation could be utilized to save energy
  • Example: Cars aren’t really insulated at all. For electric vehicles that don’t create a large amount of waste heat during operation the need to heat the vehicle cabin results in a direct drain on the battery. Can you design an electric car that integrates insulation into the cabin?

 

Environment and Climate Change

A project that helps ensure the quality of water, air, soil or the diversity of living things, or manages the impact of climate change.

 

Carbon footprints

A carbon footprint refers to the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere because of human activities. This measure allows an individual, company, or even country to measure the impact of their activities on climate change. To change something, we first must be able to measure it, and for this topic you’ll investigate how you can measure your own carbon footprint(s). From there, you’ll have the information you need to start transitioning to more sustainable practices.

Possible topics include:

• Calculate the carbon footprint of your school
  • Make a list of all the ways your school and its operation may contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
    • You’ll have to decide what to include as sources of greenhouse gas emissions from your school. Electricity and natural gas for heating are easy ones, but what about the emissions of school yard maintenance equipment, waste sent to the landfill, or even textbooks, yearbooks, and school apparel?
  • You can use existing tools for estimating a carbon footprint, but you’ll want to go into much more depth for your project. Where does the data used come from? What assumptions does it make? Do those assumptions hold for your school?
  • Compare your school with other, similarly sized buildings in the area, or your own house. If this information doesn’t already exist, you might have to calculate those numbers yourself.
• Research and critique some of the shortcomings and criticisms of the idea of a “carbon footprint”
  • If the concern is climate change, how useful is the idea of a “carbon footprint”? Investigate whether it’s a useful concept in our fight against climate change.
  • Be careful of the sources you choose, as global warming can be a contentious topic, leading to information that ranges from biased to intentionally misleading.
  • Consider trying to calculate your own carbon footprint using an online tool and pay attention to questions or assumptions that you don’t think apply very well to you.
  • When it comes to informing and motivating others to fight climate change, where do you see room for improvement?
• Create a tool to help students estimate their own carbon footprint
  • Many carbon footprint calculators exist, but they must make many assumptions about you that might not be applicable, given your unique location and lifestyle. Create your own calculator that is tailored for members of your own community.
    • Some assumptions other calculators might make: The carbon intensity of your local electricity generation, how far food has to travel to reach you, your home heating source, availability of alternative transportation options.
  • Make sure you explain how you came up with your final total and include ideas for the user to improve their score.

 

The effects of acid rain

Acid rain is rainwater that has become acidic due to the reaction of water and oxygen with the pollutants sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), resulting in the creation of sulfuric and nitric acid. SO2 and NOx are emitted primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, industrial processes, and transportation, with the resulting acidic rain having a detrimental effect on the environment, leaching nutrients from soil, damaging plant foliage, and affecting aquatic life. Understanding how acid rain is formed and the impact it has on the environment can give you an awareness of the interconnectedness of industry and the environment, while allowing you to explore a complex phenomenon that spans many different scientific fields.

Possible topics include:

• Investigate the effects of acid rain on plants
  • Research how plants are exposed to acid rain, then recreate those conditions for some test subject plants. How do your plants respond to different levels of acidity? Are the effects short-lived or long-lasting?
  • Are there naturally occurring factors that can protect the plants?
• Investigate the effects of acid rain on the ecosystems that plants grow in
  • You could choose one or more of: soil, water, plants that work symbiotically with other plants – and similar.
  • Using ‘soil’ as an example: What are the consequences of acid rain on soil health? How much acid rain needs to fall (or how acidic does it need to be) before significant changes occur to soil health? Can negative impacts be easily reversed? Similar questions could be asked regarding the health of water bodies.
  • What is the chemical, biological, and ecological reasons for acidic rain having the consequences that it does?
• Research the chemistry behind acid rain and the sources of the pollution that cause it
  • Explain the chemical reaction that happens in the atmosphere that leads to acid rain
  • What activities and processes are taking place in industry and the transportation sector that results in the release of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides? What can be done to reduce the emission of these pollutants?

 

Outdoor air quality

Air quality affects everyone because it is a shared resource with direct impacts on our health, the health of our environment, and our ability to sustain ourselves. With numerous factors influencing air quality – such as temperature, humidity, prevailing winds, surrounding vegetation, and industry – exploring the air around us requires creativity and specialized tools. By selecting outdoor air quality as your project topic, you will be choosing a challenging and universally relevant subject matter that pertains to all living beings on Earth.

General advice:

• You’ll likely want some method of measuring air quality.
  • You could try to measure it subjectively (a method of measurement that depends mostly on the person doing the measuring), but …
  • Finding a way to do it more objectively (a measurement that is likely to be the same no matter who is taking it) will more more accurate and convincing to other people.
• Read the “General advice” section for the topic “Indoor plants and air quality.”
• In short – it’ll be hard to measure all possible air pollutants, but options exist for basic air quality measurements.

Possible topics include:

• Measure the air quality at different points around your community to understand where it’s the best, the worst, and why.
  • This project would be best delivered with a map of the area where you took your measurements, labeled with the average air quality, and possibly with an overlay of how you believe sources of poor air quality move through the area.
  • Understand what environmental factors could influence the quality of air, and try to identify which may be at play in the measurements you take.
  • Be sure you say what your air quality measurements are actually measuring. For example, measurements from an air quality sensor that detects only volatile organic compounds will be very different than measurements from a sensor that detects fine particulate matter.
• Utilize publicly available air quality information on the internet to make and test your own air quality hypotheses
  • This project is likely going to have you looking at the influences on air quality on a larger scale, just because publicly available air quality information tends to cover a large area.
  • To start, it’ll help to research what contributes to the movement and polluted air.
  • Example hypothesis: I think transportation corridors between major cities will have noticeably more polluted air than surrounding areas. I believe this will be true because these roads will be busy, and industry tends to locate itself on the outskirts of cities.
    • To try to prove this I can look at the data over time between major cities and see if this appears to be true.
    • I would also consider alternative explanations for the observations I make other than transportation activity between cities. If I can’t identify any plausible alternatives, it strengthens my hypothesis; however, if there are potential alternative explanations, I should revise my expectations about what may be happening.
  • Quantify the benefit of green spaces to local air quality
    • Can you detect and measure changes in air quality related to green spaces?
    • You may be able to do this with public air quality stations, but it would be best if you used your own method of measuring air quality.
    • It’s important to note that this project says quantify. To understand how a green space affects air quality you’ll need to go beyond a simple report of “improved,” “the same,” or “worse.” To convince skeptics and really describe what you’re seeing, you’ll want to be able to provide reproducible numbers, for instance: “With wind moving from East to West, the PM2.5 measurement on the East side of the green space was 45PM, and on the West side 36PM, representing a drop of 9.”
    • It’s also important to be conscious of your own bias when investigating this. To investigate air quality and green space and not report an air quality improvement might seem the same as dropping a rock and not seeing it fall to the ground. With this project make sure you’re allowing for the possibility of a result that is inconclusive or counter to what you expect. This doesn’t mean green spaces don’t improve air quality, it means detecting it wasn’t a simple matter – and that’s still an important result!

 

Oil spill cleanup

Oil, and countless other oil-based products, crisscross the globe on ships and in trucks, tanker cars, and pipelines. Unfortunately, these products don’t always stay where we’d like them, and when they get out into the environment the result can be a catastrophic mess difficult to clean up and lethal to plants and animals. Products and techniques exist for oil spill cleanup, but at least in some cases, they can be far less effective than we’d wish.

 

Do you want to better understand how existing oil spill cleanup techniques work? Maybe you think you can do better? For now, oil spills seem inevitable, but maybe your fresh take on the problem can help prevent, detect, and/or clean-up these messes.

General advice:

• If you’re going to be testing oil spill cleanup ideas, have a plan for containing the oil and disposing of it.
• Many places will take used oil to be recycled, but things will get more complicated if the oil has been mixed with water or other material.
• I’m unsure the answer to this, so it sounds like a topic for research!
• Does cooking oil have similar properties to motor oil? That might be an option for tests, as putting cooking oil in the garbage seems acceptable…

Possible topics include:

• Study how oil spill dispersants work
  • Oil spill dispersants cause oil to clump together, which is supposed to make it easier to clean up. How does this work? Do spill dispersants themselves cause harm to the environment?
  • Lay out the case for the use of oil dispersants and show how those arguments do, or don’t, agree with your own research.
  • Can you come up with a better approach for making spilled oil easier to manage?
  • An interesting case study would be the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
• Research oil-eating bacteria
  • What bacteria eat oil? Were these bacteria that were discovered, or were they engineered in a lab?
  • How do bacteria eat oil and what is left over when they’re done?
  • Even if we were able to just “pour on” enough oil-eating bacteria to clean up an oil spill, what environmental side-effects are possible from this?
  • Who is working to engineer bacteria or other microbes to better clean up oil spills?
  • This is a good opportunity to flex your chemistry and/or biology muscles.
• Improve upon existing oil spill containment boom designs, creating prototypes and providing a demonstration
  • An oil spill containment boom is a floating barrier designed to contain the oil on the water’s surface so that it can be cleaned.
  • What are the shortcomings with existing boom designs?
  • Aside from improvements in spill containment, can your changes allow booms to work in more oil spill scenarios?
• Assess what’s left behind after an oil spill cleanup is complete
  • How clean is “clean”? What kind of detectable chemicals are left behind, and how might that affect the plants and animals in the area?
  • You can rely on published research and information regarding what’s left over, or come up with your own methods for analyzing water, plant, soil, and other material for potential residue
  • Recreate your own (properly contained!) oil spill, then follow standard clean up procedures to see what was left behind. Note the “General advice” section above.

 

Water filtration

While residents of major Canadian cities often take the availability of clean water for granted, it is important to recognize that many in rural Canada and certain regions of the world don’t have this luxury. Yet, clean water is critically important for industry, agriculture, and most importantly, human life! Consider how life-changing it could be if those without access to clean water were provided with inexpensive, effective water filtration. If you take on the topic of water filtration as your project, you have the chance to contribute toward this goal.

Possible topics include:

• Create a water filtration system using inexpensive and readily available material, such as sand and/or sawdust
  • The best start for this project would be to read what others have done before you. Some (less scientific) sources of information might include “survivalist” or outdoor-related websites, or charity organizations that are concerned about access to clean water. You’ll probably want to collect a list of materials and techniques being used.
  • Research potential water contaminants. You’re unlikely to be able to create a “universal water filter,” so consider the type of contaminants you’d like your filter to be effective against. It might be most interesting to look at the contaminants that exist in the water around you.
  • Determine how you will measure the level of water contamination before and after filtration.
• Improve upon an existing water filtration system
  • Conduct a survey of existing water-filtration technologies, understand the principles they use to work and try to improve the design.
  • Your improvement could be making the existing system cheaper to build or operate, more effective at water filtration, or easier to use.
  • Example: A reverse osmosis filter that spins to force water through the filter, rather than using a high-pressure pump.
• Research the principles used by certain water filtration methods
  • Example: How can UV light sanitize water? Under which conditions does it work best, or, not at all?

 

Health and Wellness

A project that helps prevent disease or promotes physical, social, emotional, spiritual, environmental, occupational, or intellectual wellbeing.

 

Bacteria and gut health

Kombucha, Sauerkraut, Kimchi… delicious? Well, when I catch a whiff of them, I know something will be bubbling up. Probiotics and fermented foods have gained attention for their potential to positively influence gut health, and that’s a big deal since the microorganisms in our guts have a profound impact on various aspects of human health. The link between the concept of eating certain foods to influence gut health continues to strengthen as new studies continue to come out.

 

Be on the leading edge of medical discovery and uncover the connection between the trillions of microorganisms that call your gastrointestinal tract home and your digestion, immunity, and overall health.

General advice:

• Familiarize yourself with the supposed connection between the microorganisms of the gut on other aspects of health. By what mechanism(s) are they said to be beneficial to health? Which microorganisms in particular? Is there an ideal mix?

Possible topics include:

• Explore the connection between types of food and the composition of gut microbiome
  • If you eat lots of yogurt, what happens in your stomach? What if you consumed lots of artificial sweetener or sugar or a multi-vitamin?
  • You could try experimenting on yourself but give careful thought to how you’ll assess what’s going on in your stomach.
    • You could take the qualitative approach: how you are feeling after eating sauerkraut for a week
    • You could take a more rigorous quantitative approach that would require direct measurement of some aspect influenced by your eating choices.
    • Do a quick search for “confounding variables” to help you design the right experiments.
  • As an alternative to experimenting on yourself, you can hit the books and read what others have researched regarding the topic, then make informed guesses (or inferences, if you prefer) about what influences different foods would have on a gut’s microbiome.
• Design a probiotic or fermented food regimen tailored to optimize gut health
  • Commercial products exist, but for this project you’ll either try to develop a better product, a more accessible recipe, or pick apart the “why” and “how” of why a certain recipe works well.
  • Go deep on the research for this project and save the “trial and error” for when you have some solid research to back up your decisions.
  • What target gut population are you trying to build, and what foods could help or hurt those efforts?
  • Aside from what to eat, what about when, and how much? Consider what shouldn’t be eaten.
  • Read the previous topic idea to think about how you’re going to measure the effects of your work. However, as above, you could instead cite the research of others to argue for why your recipe and regimen is ideal for gut health and skip the first-hand experimentation.
• Chase down one connection between the microbiome in a gut and the impact that has on another aspect of health
  • Spend a bit of time reading about all the different ways gut health and overall health are connected and choose one that’s of interest to you. Then, go deep and get technical, explaining to everyone else how gut health is actually able to positively impact your chosen aspect of health.
  • Remember, some of the health benefits you find may have a scientific basis, while others may have been suggested only to sell products or services. Be mindful of your sources, look for corroborating sources, and try to find original research in the matter.

 

Exercise and mood

It’s well-known that exercise has a positive impact on mood, releasing endorphins, reducing stress, improving sleep, and increasing self-esteem, to name a few. Considering the growing concern for mental health and the stress caused in these trying times^TM, taking advantage of the exercise/mood connection is as important as ever.

 

Your research into this topic could help bring more clarity to the benefits of exercise and encourage more people to take up the healthy habit as a method for managing their mood.

Possible topics include:

• Uncover the biological connections between exercise and mood
  • Pick just one of the purported benefits of exercise, then dig into how exercise brings about that benefit.
  • An interesting point to include would be if your research suggests exercise works differently for different people.
  • Consider trying to capture changes in your own mood thanks to exercise, in addition to the research and explanation you provide.
• Study whether all exercise is created equal when it comes to boosting mood
  • Is weightlifting as effective as jogging? What about exercise intensity or duration? Does the individual’s fitness level change any of this?
  • You’ll need to carefully design your experiments to not only recognize mood changes due to exercise, but to also detect the differences in mood changes between individuals. For example: “Individual A is happy and ready to start her day” and “Individual B is happy and ready to flip over tables.”
• Create an exercise planner that tailors the exercise to the person and to their desired mood
  • Depending on the time available, you can conduct your own experiments to determine the link between different types of exercise, people, and their influence on mood. Alternatively, you can research what has been written about the topic.
  • From there, create a written guide, website, interactive app – or anything suitable for your project – that guides individuals in their exercise routine to achieve the outcome they’re looking for.

 

Indoor plants and air quality

The presence of indoor plants can do more than just spruce up a living space; they can also serve as natural air purifiers. Perhaps you’ve heard that plants convert CO₂ into oxygen, but did you know they can also absorb and break down harmful airborne pollutants? With some sunlight and water, anyone can have a renewable, zero-electricity, green air filter in their home.

 

This project is an opportunity to discover some very cool biology that’s happening right under our noses. By studying the air-purifying capabilities of various indoor plants, you can help your family and others by promoting healthier living spaces.

General advice:

• For most of the proposed topics it would be worthwhile to have the ability to detect “cleaner air.” This is both easier than it sounds, but also harder.
  • Easier than it sounds because there are lots of inexpensive tools that will give you basic information about some aspects of air quality. For instance, Ikea sells a $50 air quality monitor (“VINDSTYRKA”), and many more can be found on Amazon.
  • Harder than it sounds because there are lots of different aspects to “clean air,” as you’ll discover in your research. For instance, your air quality monitor might detect the presence of CO₂, but not VOCs.

Possible topics include:

• Research how plants clean the air
  • Explore the structures and processes within plants that allow them to purify air.
  • Provide comparisons of the different air-cleaning abilities of plants, bringing your results back to your previous “structures and processes” research.
  • While it would be ideal if you could directly measure some aspect of air quality, you could instead provide “estimated results” based on what you know about individual plants.
• Create an experimentation protocol for accurately measuring the ability of a plant to purify the air
  • Consider this project one where you “create instructions for other scientists on the best way to achieve reproducible results.”
  • There are many possible reasons one might get inaccurate results when trying to measure a plant’s ability to purify the air: changes in plant health from experiment to experiment, differences in starting air quality, or changing air currents in the test area, to name a few. Your challenge will be to design an experimental protocol that attempts to account for all possible variations so that you always measure the exact result you think you’re measuring.
  • Reproducibility is extremely important in science, and by creating an experimentation protocol for a tricky experiment, you can help ensure that any experiment using your protocol will get results that are directly comparable.
• Design, and possibly build, a small-scale room that is optimized for air purification by using air cleaning plants
  • You could go “all out” and just fill every square inch with the best air purifying plants, but it might be more useful (and interesting) to work within constraints such as cost, ease of care, or looks.
  • Make sure you provide technical details on why your design is the optimal one.

 

Meditation and stress

Research suggests that meditation can have a positive effect on stress reduction, but despite its potential effectiveness there are still people skeptical or reluctant to begin their own meditation practice. Redirect your attention to this medication-free approach to stress reduction, accessible to everyone, and become mindful of the ways it can help all of us living in busy times.

Possible topics include:

• Research how meditation affects the human body
  • Research what meditation is, as there are different kinds, but also different practices which some might consider meditation while others would not. You don’t need to find the “right” answer, just be sure you establish a definition for yourself. This will help your during your research, and when you’re telling others about your project.
  • Which systems of the body respond to meditation? What are the potential secondary effects on the body? For instance, if breathing slows during meditation, it may lead to a decrease in blood pressure.
  • Find a guided meditation on YouTube to try yourself. What do you notice about how you felt before, during, and afterwards? Can you relate those feelings to the body responses you researched previously?
• Create a guide, website, or app that helps students integrate meditation practices into their day-to-day lives
  • You’ll include information on how a novice can start meditating but be sure to go further and consider what would help your audience start and maintain a meditation practice.
  • Study the reasons why people your age aren’t doing – or won’t try – meditation and address these topics in your guide.
  • Include the scientific evidence for why your recommendations can lead to positive outcomes.
• Report on what is currently considered leading-edge meditation research
  • Where is there currently active study and disagreement on the use of meditation? As an example, some mental ailments have a basis in chemical imbalances, while others have more to do with how an individual “frames” a situation. From what you’ve learned about meditation, can you imagine it being effective at alleviating both kinds of ailments?
  • Make sure you understand the reason behind why meditation is supposed to help in the area of disagreement. Learn what you can about the brain and body systems at play, presenting the disagreement along with your critique of some of the arguments you’ve found.

 

Screen time and physical health

Phones, laptops, and TVs are all modern devices that our foremothers and forefathers didn’t have the luxury of using. But if my grandmother is to be believed, “you’ll ruin your eyes!” if you sit in front of any of these for too long. Could my Grammy be right? Beyond the eyes, there’s also concern for neck strain, considering the hunched-over posture many of us have as we use our devices. Considering how much of our days consist of looking at screens, maybe someone should investigate this! Will it be you?

General advice:

• For any project researching screen time and physical health, you’ll want to start by studying what has already been written about the subject. If you plan to limit your project to the eyes or the body, you can save some time by focusing just on that area.

Possible topics include:

• Research and report on how staring at screens for an extended period affects the eyes
  • Write a report that outlines the potential problem, the relevant research you found related to the problem, and the evidence-backed conclusions you reach on how staring at screens for an extended period affects the eyes.
  • Make sure you include more than a “yes” or “no” answer and think about what an interested audience for your report would want to know:
    • Are our eyes actually changing because of our habits, or is this a problem for only as long as we’re staring at a screen?
    • What is it about looking at screens this is so harmful? Is it the light? The closeness of the screen?
    • Can anything be done? Are e-ink screens a viable option?
  • Create a strategy guide to help me/you/others to maximize screen time while minimizing eye/body pain
    • Create a guide that both explains the risks of extended screen sessions, as well as possible ways to avoid them.
    • How can eye strain be reduced? What’s the best way to sit? Do blue-light blockers help? What about the “20-20-20 Rule”?
    • Using the knowledge you’ve gained and some ingenuity, come up with different ways of using common devices to alleviate body stress and strain.
  • Discover what upcoming technology, near-term or in the distant future, promises to alleviate the health risks of extended screen use.
    • Consider including technology that directly addresses issues of Human-Computer Interaction (like ergonomic keyboards or voice-control), as well as entirely new ways of computing, such as virtual reality.
    • Could any new problems – physical or otherwise – be introduced with any of the new technology you looked at?

 

Natural Resources

A project that helps ensure the sustainable management, use, reuse or recycling of Earth’s finite or renewable natural resources.

 

Deforestation

With deforestation, de-forest is gone. Why? It could have been cleared for various purposes, such as logging operations, making room for cropland, commercial or residential developments, or even a pristine 18-hole golf course. With all the roles forests play in the larger ecosystem, deforestation is concerning – forests can help moderate local climate, influence precipitation, and support biodiversity. This is a developing issue, the consequence of which we may not fully understand yet. Your efforts in this area could help us understand what level of deforestation is sustainable, how to better manage land that has been cleared, and find new ways that cleared land can be reforested. Wood you help us out?

Possible topics include:

• Study the consequences of deforestation on the local environment, big and small
  • Find locations where cleared land exists right next to forested land, using the two areas for comparison.
  • Consider soil, water, and air quality in the affected areas, as well as those areas that are nearby.
  • Due to the number of consequences, you may find it difficult to give any one consequence a thorough investigation. In anticipation of this, keep an eye out for one consequence you’d like to go into depth with, so you can flex your science muscle a little more.
  • A human-angle might give your work a little more “punch,” so consider interviewing people who live near recently deforested areas and ask them what they’ve experienced.
• Research bioenergy and the use of forest biomass to generate heat, electricity, and fuel
  • “Bioenergy” is energy made from biomass, which in our case, comes from wood from forests.
  • The big question to answer: Is bioenergy actually an environmentally friendly replacement for fossil fuels? Find what others have said, but as always, be mindful of your sources.
• Research the degree to which forest management practices successfully replace cleared forest
  • Reforestation is replanting trees after the previous trees have been harvested, and it is typically part of a forest management practice undertaken by logging companies. Considerable controversy exists, however, regarding whether this practice results in an equivalent replacement to the trees that were lost.
  • You’re going to be performing a comparison of two types of forests – one that hasn’t been logged before, and one that was logged but then replanted. Be careful with your choice of a comparison forest, as there may be many different types of not-previous-logged forest, each with different characteristics.
  • Ability to support a resilient and diverse ecosystem is a good start for how to compare two types of forest. Research “ecosystem service” to consider ways that forests might help humans more directly.
• Design a more effective reforestation technique
  • Research how reforestation is currently done and understand why it is done that way.
  • Look at the shortcomings of these techniques and try to improve upon them. Keep in mind cost and implementation difficulty.
  • Choose metrics with which you’ll assess your solution against existing solutions. It might be carbon capture, biodiversity supported, or even time between logging.

 

Composting

Harnessing the composting process allows you to reduce household waste, enhance soil quality, and is a great excuse to dig into the biological and chemical transformations that occur during decomposition. Experiment with variables to optimize composting efficiency, such as temperature, moisture, and carbon-to-nitrogen ratio, and offer potential solutions for more efficient waste management and sustainable agriculture practices.

General advice:

• For any project you take on, you’re going to want to be as familiar as possible with composting and the processes behind it.

Possible topics include:

• Study the biological and chemical processes that lead to the break down organic waste
  • Outline the transitions that organic waste goes through, right up to the point of plants benefiting from the nutrient-rich compost humus. Make sure you’re including the environmental conditions that help the process happen.
  • You’ll want to give this a try yourself. Pictures from different stages of decomposition would go well with any other work you present.
• Write a composting-at-home guide that guides a person through setup, use, and troubleshooting of their compost bin
  • Consider who your target audience is and write for them. Assume they don’t just want to compost, but that they’re also curious about all the details.
  • Try to anticipate the problems people might run into and include solutions for them in your guide.
  • To be sure you’re qualified to write this guide, find several sources on composting to see what their suggestions are for how to start.
  • Put your guide to the test and give it to friends and family and see how well they do with their own compost setup.
• Research the different kinds of composting methods; compare and contrast how they work
  • Let’s call the “put everything in a pile and wait” method the “passive pile.” This isn’t the only way to turn organic matter into nutrient-rich humus. Consider other methods like anerobic decomposition, vermicomposting, or anything else you can find.
  • Evaluate the effects that these different methods have on the quality of the resulting compost, how long each takes, and/or the ease of use.
• Design your own composting system for a target audience, optimizing one or two aspects of your system
  • Considering the composting needs of a small family, you might want a low-maintenance, low-smell solution that can accommodate a week of food scraps.
  • A commercial composting facility might care the most about speed. In this case you might consider ways to heat the compost, design a warehouse-sized worm bin, or create an innovative way to ensure optimal moisture content.

 

Groundwater

For something that’s just lying around on (actually, in) the ground, groundwater is often quite clean. However, aside from human-caused contamination, there are natural factors that can cause groundwater to be unpalatable to humans – or even highly dangerous! For a natural resource this important, understanding more about the factors affecting groundwater quality can quench your thirst for knowledge and will surely make you the life of any party – especially if everyone continues live thanks to your dedication to safe groundwater!

Possible topics include:

• Research the natural processes that result in clean groundwater
  • To guide your research just follow the journey water takes from sky to groundwater. Be sure to include the different groundwater-related phenomena that exist. For example, natural springs or a “losing stream.”
  • Consider providing a demonstration by pouring dirty water through a bucket or tank layered with material like that which would be found in the ground.
  • The deeper you go, the cleaner groundwater tends to be. Why is that?
  • “Clean” water is definitely not pure H₂O – what else is in there, and how did it get in there?
• Investigate how groundwater moves through different types of soil and rocks
  • Include examples and pictures of any above ground results that can be attributed to below-ground composition.
  • There’s an opportunity here to make a model of this in a fish tank or similar, showing the movement of water through different ground material. YouTube may have some ideas for you.
  • How long does it take water at the surface to enter different underground water bodies? Is a lake just a spot where groundwater has reached the surface?
  • It’s not very easy to see into the ground, so how do we know where groundwater might be and how much of it there is?
• Identify groundwater contamination risks present in your community and come up with ways to prevent contamination
  • Start by getting a sense for the kinds of risks there are to groundwater, then start looking around your community to see if you can spot any.
  • Gas stations, tailing ponds, car washes, fracking, cattle, fertilizer… What’s the likelihood of contamination? If contamination does happen, how serious would it be?
  • With some potential sources of contamination in mind, hit the books again and search for the consequences if contamination does occur and current methods for preventing it.
  • Do you see evidence that the risk of contamination has been taken seriously?
• Discover how the quality of drinking water from wells is improved, going deep on the technical details of how one method works
  • Start by understanding the quality problems well-water might be particularly susceptible to. Search for well-water testing services or “test drinking water.” What are the kinds of contamination that people are trying to prevent or solve?
  • Example topic: Reverse osmosis.
    • Reverse osmosis involves using pressure to force water through a semi-permeable membrane.
    • You’d want to describe this membrane in detail, what it can stop from passing through and what it allows. Discuss some possible disadvantages (like the requirement for pre-filtration, water waste, and high energy use) and advantages (ability to remove a wide range of contaminants)

 

Mining

Mining natural resources can require huge amounts of energy and often results in environmentally damaging waste. However, the metals and minerals produced from mining are indispensable to the modern world we live in – from the gold in our phones to the lithium in our car batteries. What can be done to lessen the environmental impact of mining while still benefiting from the metals and minerals it produces? By studying and proposing innovative technologies and techniques, you can make a positive impact on the mining industry, minimizing its environmental footprint and promoting responsible resource management.

Possible topics include:

• Write an environmental impact assessment of a mining activity that’s of interest to you
  • Start by reading about what an environmental impact assessment is, creating an outline for yourself of what you want to include and what you’ll leave out. Try to keep a balance of interesting, challenging, but also attainable, considering your skill level and available time.
  • For the mining activity you’ve selected, research companies that operate the relevant mines. Check out “Investor relations” pages for possible information.
  • Leave time and room to elaborate on mine operation consequences. For example, don’t stop at “pollutes waterways,” go one or two steps further, explaining what “pollutes waterways” means and why it matters.
• Research the potential for “circular economy” principles to be used in a meaningful part of the mining sector
  • The concept of “circular economy” focuses on minimizing waste, maximizing resource efficiency, and promoting sustainable practices throughout the entire product life cycle.
  • Learn about the different processes that take place in a mining operation and find one or two promising areas where you see potential for recycling and reusing mining by-products, developing closed-loop systems, or implementing beneficial relationship between one needed input with a current waste output.
  • Propose your idea for making mining more environmentally sustainable and explain in detail why your idea could work.
• Research and explain how bioremediation is being used to treat tailing ponds
  • Tailing ponds are large reservoirs that store waste materials generated from mining operations. Because of the toxicity of their contents, they must be treated before the water can be reused or released back into the environment.
  • Bioremediation utilizes bacteria to break down and degrade contaminants present in tailing ponds.
  • Can all tailing pond contaminants be processed by bacteria? How are bacteria able to break down chemicals that are toxic to so many other lifeforms?
  • What are other methods of tailing pond remediation and how does bioremediation compare?

 

Waste segregation

We depend on different biological and chemical processes to process our waste, with the process used depending on where our waste ends up. In a landfill, waste is typically buried, causing oxygen-limited conditions that can delay decomposition while also releasing potent greenhouse gases. By sorting our waste streams (waste segregation) to minimize what ends up in the landfill and maximizing what might be recycled, we can limit the environmental harm of our waste as well as preserve natural resources. You can study the ways we sort our waste and the chemical and biological processes used to breakdown what can’t be reused, and in doing so, help to manage landfills more effectively and mitigate their environmental impact.

Possible topics include:

• Investigate and report on how waste is sorted and disposed of in your community
  • Is there local recycling pick-up? Is composting encouraged? How easy is it to properly dispose of hazardous waste, like old paint, tires, or electronics?
  • Research how different types of waste should be disposed of and the risks of improper disposal. How does your community fare? What might the environmental impacts be for your community considering how waste is disposed of?
• Uncover the chemical and biological processes that occur in landfills
  • What happens to the different kinds of waste (plastic, metal, organic, for example) once they’re disposed of in a landfill? Over what time do changes take place?
  • How do landfill operators attempt to encourage/discourage these natural processes?
  • Are current waste segregation practices sufficient to avoid some of the worst outcomes of sending waste to landfills? This question could apply to “best practice” or your local community.
• Invent a better method for sorting waste
  • Ideas:
    • Propose a deposit system that encourages consumers to properly sort their waste, like the one that exists for bottles and cans, but applied to other forms of recyclable waste
    • Design a “last minute rescue” sorting process that can lead to the identification and removal of recyclable waste that reaches the landfill.
    • Research the possibility of the intentional introduction of bacteria to a landfill to cause the decomposition of organic material in a way that reduces methane emissions.