Unit 2: Earth Science Project

As with the last unit project, you will be carrying out a project of your own design and then summarizing your project briefly. 

You can conduct your experiment on any topic that we discussed in the unit. Remember to ask a specific, testable question. 

We encourage you to be creative and pick a project that interests you. As a reminder, we encourage you to choose a project that can be completed in a few days, but, if you would like to pursue a project that takes longer, you can. You will just have to pay a little more attention to your time-management with the rest of your coursework (such as continuing to complete other lessons while your project is ongoing in the background).

If you’re looking for ideas, some topics that most easily lend themselves to experimentation include:

  • Particle sorting. How do different particles sort under different conditions?
  • The Atmosphere and Climate Change. For example, you could try to understand how certain weather patterns occur, or you could make a model of a climate change system and test how different interventions affect it, or you could test some climate change intervention in the real world (as long as you can have a measurable effect, like a survey on how likely people are to adopt that change).
  • Rocks and Minerals. How do different rocks change under different conditions? For example, you could replicate weathering of rocks, acid damage, or other environmental conditions.

It can also be helpful to see what other people have done. We really want you to use your creativity and try to come up with something that interests you and makes use of the resources that you have on hand, but there are some good websites that list common science fair projects for your learning level. Keep in mind that some ideas will be more relevant to what you’ve learned than others. Here are some websites that suggest various ideas:
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​The purpose of this project is to encourage scientific thinking and use of the scientific method. It encourages you to incorporate knowledge that you have learned in your studies to your own interests, allowing them to explore your own personal scientific curiosity. We don’t necessarily expect your first experiment to show a perfect grasp of the scientific method (though you should do your best), but we anticipate that you will improve as a scientific thinker with each project.

Doing these projects will require an understanding of the Scientific Method, as outlined below. You will be asked about each of these things in relationship to your project when you tell us what you did.
  1. Ask a question. A good scientific question is one that can be easily answered with an experiment. “What” questions are great. “How/why” questions are harder to answer through experimentation. Your question should lead to an answer that has a measurable result. We’ll talk more about thinking about science in this way in just a moment.
  2. Do background research. For the purposes of this class, background research may be as simple as reviewing the information learned in the lessons to try to answer your question based on what you already know. You may also do background research using the internet, in which case you should be mindful that you are using legitimate resources. Many educational websites are great, and those that end in .org, .gov, or .edu are the most reliable.
  3. Form a hypothesis. Using the information obtained in your background research, try to answer your own question. A hypothesis commonly takes the form of “If I do X, then Y will happen.” This is essentially an educated guess. Only our experiment will tell us what actually happens.
  4. Design an experimental protocol. This is an outline of the steps you will take to answer your scientific question. We’ll talk more about designing a protocol in just a moment.
  5. Gather your materials and run your experiment. This is the part where you actually do what you said you were going to do. For the purposes of this class, we strongly encourage you to consider what experiments are possible with the items you already have on hand (don’t have to buy) and that can be completed within a few days. If you’re interested in doing an experiment that will take longer than a few days, you can do this, especially if it will only take a few minutes of monitoring a day until the end of the experiment, but be sure to manage your time effectively to keep up with your other coursework.
  6. Collect data. As you are running your experiment, you should be collecting data. Remember, this data should be information that helps you to answer your scientific question. Data can be either quantitative, meaning in the form of numbers, or qualitative, meaning in the form of something that can be described. We’ll talk more about the difference in just a moment.
  7. Analyze data and draw conclusions. What did your data tell you about your scientific question? Did it prove your hypothesis correct, or was your hypothesis false? Knowing what you know now, would you have done anything differently with your experiment?
  8. Plan next steps. As scientists, we are very rarely fully satisfied with the answers of our experiments. One question just opens up a whole new window of possibilities, and we have even more questions that we want to answer. You don’t need to do follow-up experiments for this class, but we do want you starting to think about the types of follow-up experiments that might be interesting.

For more on the scientific method, check out our resources tab.