Stand out with your junior high school independent research! A collection of fun experiment and craft ideas
To all middle schoolers who want to wow teachers and friends with a “That’s awesome!” in your independent research project! There are tons of experiments in science and crafts that lead to surprising discoveries—even with simple materials.
Make a train run with copper wire and a battery, pop a balloon with an orange peel…
The real charm is getting to witness strange phenomena you’d never notice in everyday life with your own eyes.
Here, we’ll introduce fun experiments and crafts that can spark ideas for your project.
Whether you love science or not, you’re sure to find discoveries that make you go, “Aha!”
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Stand out with your junior high school independent research! A collection of fun experiment and craft ideas (101–110)
An ultraviolet experiment using bananas
Many people use sunscreen in the summer, but have you ever felt unsure whether it really works? Here’s an experiment I recommend.
Apply sunscreen to part of a banana and leave it under the sun for about half a day.
Then store it in a dark place.
When you look at the banana afterward, you’ll see that the areas without sunscreen have discolored.
Besides sunscreen, try wrapping the banana with different materials like aluminum foil, plastic wrap, or UV-protective clothing, and compare the results to summarize their effectiveness.
Artificial salmon roe
How about making artificial salmon roe? You might wonder, “Is making salmon roe fun?” but it’s actually quite interesting.
Here’s how: prepare aqueous solutions of sodium alginate and calcium chloride, each at 1 wt%, then simply drop the red-colored sodium alginate solution into the calcium chloride solution.
The key points are to mix and dissolve the calcium chloride thoroughly, and to add the sodium alginate solution little by little using a dropper or similar tool.
While summarizing the relationship between the sodium alginate solution and the calcium chloride solution, try experimenting with how changing the way you drop it alters the shape.
And whatever you do, don’t eat the roe you make!
Cardboard projector
Why not try making your own projector? It’s simple to build—you just need a cardboard box, a magnifying glass, and a smartphone.
Cut a circular hole in the side of the cardboard box and install the magnifying lens, then play a video on your smartphone.
That’s all it takes to complete your original projector.
Let’s also research and summarize why this setup works as a projector, connecting it to the properties of light.
Skeleton Egg
How about making an egg that looks like a transparent rubber ball? You can make it with a raw egg and vinegar.
Put the egg in a container and soak it in vinegar for about two days… the shell will dissolve, leaving you with a “skeleton egg.” It’s a fun experiment both to look at and to touch.
Hydrostatic Pressure Experiment
The underwater world is full of wonders, isn’t it? Here’s an experiment that focuses on water pressure.
If you’ve ever swum in a pool, you may have noticed that the pressure you feel on your body is different when you’re doing the crawl or breaststroke at the surface compared to when you’re diving deeper down.
To make this visible, let’s try an experiment using a plastic bottle.
If this much changes over just a few meters, then the water pressure at seafloor depths of hundreds of meters must be beyond imagination.
Stand Out in Your Junior High School Independent Research! A Collection of Fun Experiment and Craft Ideas (111–120)
Making a fuel cell
Speaking of fuel cells, there’s the kind that can generate electricity when water is split into hydrogen and oxygen.
You might remember doing an experiment in science class where you put a zinc plate and a copper plate into dilute hydrochloric acid—but you can actually do something similar with a sports drink and pencils! First, dip pencils connected to a battery into a sports drink.
Then disconnect the battery and connect an LED to the pencils… and amazingly, the LED lights up, showing that electricity is being generated from the sports drink.
Try investigating and writing a report on the principles behind this phenomenon, why a sports drink works, and whether it can be done with other beverages or salt water.
Homemade compost: making fertilizer from kitchen scraps
Compost is what you get when kitchen scraps and fallen leaves from the home are broken down and fermented using the power of fungi and microorganisms to become fertilizer.
It takes some time to turn into fertilizer, so it’s a perfect theme to work on during a long break like summer vacation.
This experiment, which lets you easily make compost using a cardboard box, is excellent from an ecological standpoint, so it’s great to keep as an ongoing habit even after the experiment.
It’s also recommended to use the finished compost in your home garden.