Your Coolest SCIENCE Project at School

edited July 18 in For SCIENCE
I'm dying to know what eveyone's coolest science class project was in school. Mine was probably when we hooked up a flexi-cam (a microscope camera) to one of the school's TVs and we got to watch Ameabas (spelling?) float around on the T.V. Boring, yet oddly cool.
«1

Comments

  • edited September 2006
    Agentcel wrote:
    Ameabas (spelling?)

    Swing and a miss.



    I don't know about coolest but the thing that stands out most in my mind is lighting magnesium strips on fire. Which can blind you if you look directly at it.
  • edited September 2006
    We played with the Wimshurst Machine in physics class. It's this wheel you spin around that grinds a needle against this sand papery stuff and builds up an electric charge. When you touch it, you shock yourself! I accidentally touched the electic-y part with both hands at the same time while I was trying to move the machine, and got a larger-than-normal-kinda-painful shock.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimshurst_machine
  • edited September 2006
    Hmmm. Well we did mess with a tesla coil thing once. Although I'm more fond of the time me and another kid made what I had dubbed a perpetual motion machine. Not sure that it really was, but we had a coil of copper wire hanging over the top of a magnet propped on a book and gave the coil a little push to start it spinning. We were supposed to see how long we could get it to spin. Naturally, we started timing and after nearly 10 minutes we sorta gave up on the timing thing. Nobody else could go for more than 30 seconds If I remember correctly. We ended up having to stop it because the class was ending.
  • edited September 2006
    I know in one physics class some friends of mine made a hovercraft using a vacuum. They later did the same thing on Mythbusters.
  • edited September 2006
    In physics in high school, we all had to give some report on some aspect of physics we thought was cool. My partners and I researched time travel and read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. It was so damn fun to research.
  • edited September 2006
    My favorite in highschool was when we made alcohol. My favorite in College is when we played with liquid nitrogen.
  • edited September 2006
    Amoeba Boy wrote:
    I know in one physics class some friends of mine made a hovercraft using a vacuum. They later did the same thing on Mythbusters.

    Two kids in my class did that once too. My brother also made a parabolic dish that could pick up sounds from over 100 feet away. That was pretty cool.

    The coolest thing I ever did was build bridges out of balsa wood and then destroy them. Not very exciting, but we did get full credit.
  • edited September 2006
    My bridge didn't last long, but it looked the best.
  • edited September 2006
    I just remembered a solar hot box I made. It was a pretty boring deal, but I and my partner once again bested the rest of the class achieving a temp of something like 94 degrees celcius. Maybe I should revisit some of those old projects and construct a "solar death ray"...
    Nah, it's been done.
  • edited September 2006
    This wasn't officially a science experiment, but I and a friend once went to get chemicals from the lab for an experiment we needed to do for coursework. In the room we saw nitrogen and iodine, and took some of both and made nitrogen tri-iodide and hid bits of it all around school. Such fun.
  • edited September 2006
    My favorite in College is when we played with liquid nitrogen.

    -I NEED to be you.
  • jcjc
    edited September 2006
    XoLore wrote:
    I just remembered a solar hot box I made. It was a pretty boring deal, but I and my partner once again bested the rest of the class achieving a temp of something like 94 degrees celcius. Maybe I should revisit some of those old projects and construct a "solar death ray"...
    Nah, it's been done.

    I knew plenty of people in high school who made hot boxes, but how'd you get away with it in class?
  • edited September 2006
    I'm blanking on all science projects except the laser that I sadly did not use to cut a sandwich, as Jon suggested. BUT! as an undergrad, I worked in a lab that was getting ready to close up for a while, and I got to use its liquid nitrogen to make ice cream. I learned nothing about science that day.
  • edited September 2006
    I stole my brother's research on the efficacy of commercial meat-tenderizers and the relative Ph of meat samples.

    I won third place.
  • edited September 2006
    Stef wrote:
    I'm blanking on all science projects except the laser that I sadly did not use to cut a sandwich, as Jon suggested. BUT! as an undergrad, I worked in a lab that was getting ready to close up for a while, and I got to use its liquid nitrogen to make ice cream. I learned nothing about science that day.


    Me and a friend/classmate/ex-girlfriend did perform a number of liquid nitrogen demonstrations in front of a class of young-graders. We made ice-cream, and finale'd the event with a dumping of excess Liquid Nitrogen upon hot concrete.

    I learned a fuckload about SCIENCE that day, including the fact that:
    A) A little splashed Liquid Nitrogen upon one's shirt will not do anything except evaporate.
    B) The condensation on a beaker WILL freeze to the table if enough dry ice is placed in said beaker.
    C) Liquid Nitrogen, Egg-Beaters, Half-and-half, and chocolate syrup make a delicious treat.
  • edited September 2006
    Before the head chemistry teacher at my old high school was fired and arrested for having sex with a student, he'd frequently mess around with liquid nitrogen. Including throwing it on a student and watching them freak out while it harmlessly evaporated. There was also the time it slid down between the collar of a kid's shirt where it wasn't exposed to air and gave him horrible burns. Man, good times were had by all!
  • edited September 2006
    My highschool chem teacher wasn't close to be cool as all that. She didn't even try to have sex with me once.
  • edited September 2006
    My chem teacher was obsessed with cats and geocaching.

    I'm convinced he gave me bonus points on a test for drawing a cat on the bottom of the page...

    Also, he'd often devote half the classtime to the homework that was due that day, and not accept it until it was perfect, which kinda made it into classwork.

    He sang some pretty cool songs, though. They still get stuck in my head from time to time.
  • edited September 2006
    I remember one time when my chem. teacher poured some 90% rubbing alcohol into a dryed 5 gallon water cooler bottle. He swilred it around to get the largest volume of evaporated alcohol within as possible. He placed it on it's side on the floor (pointed towards the door), put a flame near the mouth and let it rocket out the door and ito the lockers scaring the hell out of a girl out there.
  • edited September 2006
    My chem teacher would blow clouds of small particles (usually spores, as I remember) through a tube onto an open flame to make a huge fireball.

    The only thing I remember from chem is this, a VERY IMPORTANT life lesson:

    Hot glass looks like cold glass.
  • edited September 2006
    Man, good times were had by all!

    except the kid who was burned. heh heh.
  • edited September 2006
    I guess. And if you want to include the later case of statutory rape then I suppose you could say his wife and two kids also didn't enjoy themselves, but eh.
  • edited September 2006
    Gotta say I can't really recall any exact experiments that were mind blowingly awesome. However I do remember setting a part the ceiling on fire at one point, though I can't remember exactly how it happened apart from there were chemicals involved. There was also trying to make magnesium flares for the purpose of...well I don't think there was a purpose actually.
  • edited September 2006
    You mean you actually need a purpose to make magnesium flares?
  • edited September 2006
    Well I couldn't find one so I guess not, maybe looking for a purpose was the point of the exercise, I can't quite recall.
  • edited September 2006
    Well, I'm quite sure this is not what you're referring to, but it's still a Project, it takes place at school, and I think it qualifies as something that one would do FOR SCIENCE!
    At school this year, me and a couple of friends have what has now taken the name of Project Chaos (it sounds less cliché in Spanish). The idea is basically to create as much chaos as possible inside the classroom, or if possible school. For example, I took one of those orange traffic cones from the entrance/parking lot to the classroom, and put it on top of the lockers. Not a single teacher noticed it for about a week.
    Another example is that everytime someone makes a presentation about a president (for History class each student has to make a presentation about one of Ecuador's presidents), we take the picture, and put it in the highest part of the wall, for which we have to move the lockers next to the wall and stand on top of them, since the wall is like four meters tall. We also have put other things there, like stickers of every presidential candidate we can get (it's elections for president this year in Ecuador). The best part is, no one knows how the pictures get up there.
    However, our biggest caper yet took place two weeks ago. I had one of those 3M spray glue extra-strong thingies, and during recess, we pasted socks, a pair of boxers, and a heck of a lot of flyers to the wall. We also drew a doorbell next to the door of the classroom, and we drew millions of elves, dwarfs, and leprechauns in the whiteboard with permanent marker, and then sprayed glue all over it. Then we turned a picture of Ecuador's coat of arms upside down, and pasted an empty bottle of coke to the picture of a saint, so it would look like he was having a drink. It was nifty.
  • edited September 2006
    Wow! That's down right vandalis. Reminds me of when I sports taped a kid to the ceiling.
  • edited September 2006
    I'm fairly sure the purpose of making magnesium flares is setting the ceiling on fire.
  • edited September 2006
    My chemestry teacher once filled bubbles with gas, and then ignited them with a flame on a stick. there were burn marks on the celing afterwards.
  • edited September 2006
    Reminds me of when I sports taped a kid to the ceiling.

    -I need to know more on this subject.