My Dad subscribed to Scientific American. There was a column called The Amateur Scientist that was a treasure trove of fair-worthy experiments and models.
That and Estes (the model rocket folks) who had a wind tunnel plan using rocket body tubes that actually worked, made for some success in the school science fairs, though we never went up the chain (private schoolers were not welcomed into the public school fair hierarchy).
@duodec ooooh! i loved Scientific American, and subscribed all the way from high school up until the point a few years ago when they tried to turn into something like "popular science" and the quality went to shit. I have a collection of original issues from the 1890's through the 1950's or so stored up in my attic that i bought at an estate sale years ago. It is a window into a past age, full of articles on steam power, the new sulfa drugs coming out that will save wounded soldiers, and the new automobile.
Didn't have science fairs. Saw them in movies and such, but none of the schools I attended had them. Probably for the best. I sorta had a thing for fire and lighting things and what not.
Somehow I made it all the way through school without being involved in a science fair...I guess they just didn't have them where I grew up. It's sad, because it's the kind of thing that I would have loved to do.
@MsELizardBeth I just think is something only some schools ever did and movies made it look more common I never had one and I went to School from the mid 60 to 70s
@AnotherDawn They start torturing kids from 2nd grade on here in our part of NC. I was not a fan as an unorganized, procrastinating child... and I'm even less enthused as an unorganized, procrastinating mom. ;)
@modmamajama Well, have I got a great science fair project for you. Easy and actually interesting. Have your kid take her/his temperature several times a day, before eating, after eating, after bath, after exercise, etc., for about a week. Graph it or just make a goofy poster board with the results. Call it "Is 98.6 Degrees Really The Normal Body Temperature?" Or, "Variables In Body Temperature With Activity" or whatever. Simple but winnable!
The only science fair I really participated in, I basically just benchmarked and compared about 10 different file compression tools on multiple metrics. (How long did it take for different kinds of files? What was the compressed size?) Things like Lha, Arj, Zip, Arc, etc. I don't think Rar was a think yet back then. I do remember that PKZip was sort of the middle-of-the-road thing, and yet it mostly won the battle in the long run.
@kazriko You might be interested in the awesome BBS Documentary: http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/ which covers the compressors of the time and has some interviews with the creators (All the interviews are on the Internet Archive if you're interested).
Science fair was awesome. Had one while I was in elementary school (2nd grade?) and got first place! Booyah! Something about mirrors, water, reflection, rainbows ;) all I vividly remember is the coolest kid in school gave me a high five when he saw my first place ribbon! LOL
I grew up in a shitty school district that didn't have science fairs. They were mostly grooming us for blue-collar jobs so intelligence and creativity weren't rewarded.
My best science fair project was the year (I think I was about 12 or 13 at the time) that I bought hundreds of germanium diodes and a project perf board from Radio shack and spent a week constructing a base 10 to binary converter matrix circuit. You would type a number on a set of input keys and the output would display the number in binary. Basically it was a hand built computer chip that was a foot square, and it worked perfectly. This was in about 1975 when hand held calculators were just becoming mainstream and PCs were still something only big corporations and universities had. For some unknown reason the judges of the fair included teachers from many non-science departments. The science and math teachers loved it, but I don't think the english and gym teachers understood quite what it was so it didn't do well. I was proud as hell of it though.
Yeah, I was one of those nerd kids; I even had a slide rule and knew how to use it.
@Steve7654 i am in medical school and mentioned use of a slide rule in passing. this kid (about 22) said, "what is that? like a dance from the 80s?" how hopeless these children would be had they taken any maths without the TI-83...
@Steve7654 I was in the first high school class that was not required to learn slide rule. My dad made me anyway. I can still do some stuff with it. My first year in college the bookstore dumped all their slide rules for $1 a box. Picketts mostly. I picked up some interesting special function ones; electrical engineering, etc. I also got one that was a dual kit: one regular and one mini, again, for $1.
Another year I sealed some beans and water soaked cotton inside of an airtight glass bottle and weighed it every day. As the beans sprouted and grew inside the bottle it gained mass, proving that plants can convert light energy directly into mass since there was nowhere else for the increase to come from. At the time this was theoretically impossible,
Right next to mine was a night before "experiment" one of the jocks made, called "the effects of mustard and ketchup on grass", and another kid found a roadkill animal and tried to extract and reassemble the skeleton with wire and glue. It smelled horrible, and the teachers moved it out back of the building, I just loved science fair week.
Never had a science fair as a kid either, BUT, as an adult, I worked for an agency that provided judges to the local schools for their fairs, so I got to judge 3-4 years. It was great fun, saw bunches that were clearly Mom/Dad, many less than 'meh' projects, a couple that were disturbingly wrong and 1-2 that really shone. The ones that were best were not the 'hardest science' ones, but ones that showed the passion and interest of the kid.
We always moved at the end of the year, my dad's contracts ended in December. So, I never got to participate in a science fair. (Started, but never finished any projects.)
I had to do two different science fair presentations. One was about magnetism which was so half assed it was funny. I hated the scientific process. Why do I need to test this shit? It's already been proven! I remember the day I had to present that one because 1), my father got the family tickets to Phantom of the Opera (back when there was like a 2 year waiting list) so I missed school that day and had to come back that evening to present, and 2) that was also the night that President Bush the elder announced that we were going into Kuwait. They played his address over the loudspeaker while we had our silly presentations out.
The second was about insulation and heat transfer. This one I kind of cared about because it was kind of fun. My dad bought me a digital meat thermometer, so I basically took water that was heated to a specific temperature and then put it in a container with the thermometer. I then put different materials around the hot water and measured the initial temperature and then the temp after 10 or so minutes. I used things like insulation, newspapers, rocks, sand, anything that could surround the hot water (don't forget the control, air). I remember finding out that newspaper did the best at insulating the heat, which kind of impressed my teachers. I got to present this to two other science fair competitions because it was so interesting. Someone suggested that shredded newspaper might be considered a budget alternative to insulation for lower cost home insulation and be good for recycling.
Science fairs at my house were family affairs. When my older brother had to do one he decided on building a stupid volcano. But to add a twist we, the family decided to build Vesuvius, complete with Pompeii. With exacto knives and tons of Ivory soap everyone carved tiny little houses which we painted with cheap water colors. My mom was particularly good at doing various temples. They were little works of art. The finished volcano and city was just amazing. Dad, the chemist came up with some kind of concoction to make the volcano smoke and spew sparks. The science of the project was lame, but the magnificence of the city was so impressive brother got an A. I should say, the family got an A. The family did it again a few years later for a history fair I was involved in. We built, Rome, all 7 hills. We should have bought shares in Ivory soap.
@Teripie Isn't amazing to think that modern kids have EVERYTHING in their lives captured? Major milestones in my life went unphotographed, the youngest has 40 pictures of her smearing the glass at the hippo tank in the aquarium.
My cousin's kids always had really cool stuff they did. My cousin is an engineer, his kids (girls) are also interested in that - one keeps entering high school robot competitions and her team keeps placing and she got early acceptance at, I think, MIT (some big name engineering school in the north east anyway). They did all sorts of cool shit, some of which would be brought to family gatherings to show off. What I did always looked lame in comparison. Of course I lived in a household where no one did science and we barely had any tools (but we did have art supplies LOL) so it was all on me, but I enjoyed even though I never placed.
blowing shit up.
@meatyochre for science!
is...is that... Rush Limbaugh?
@Steve7654 It's one of the late-season Cosby kids.
My Dad subscribed to Scientific American. There was a column called The Amateur Scientist that was a treasure trove of fair-worthy experiments and models.
That and Estes (the model rocket folks) who had a wind tunnel plan using rocket body tubes that actually worked, made for some success in the school science fairs, though we never went up the chain (private schoolers were not welcomed into the public school fair hierarchy).
@duodec ooooh! i loved Scientific American, and subscribed all the way from high school up until the point a few years ago when they tried to turn into something like "popular science" and the quality went to shit. I have a collection of original issues from the 1890's through the 1950's or so stored up in my attic that i bought at an estate sale years ago. It is a window into a past age, full of articles on steam power, the new sulfa drugs coming out that will save wounded soldiers, and the new automobile.
@duodec American Scientist magazine is today what Scientific American used to be, in case you miss it.
Didn't have science fairs. Saw them in movies and such, but none of the schools I attended had them. Probably for the best. I sorta had a thing for fire and lighting things and what not.
@bartm Same here.
Somehow I made it all the way through school without being involved in a science fair...I guess they just didn't have them where I grew up. It's sad, because it's the kind of thing that I would have loved to do.
I don't recall any science fairs.
@Pamela I, likewise, don't recall there having ever been a science fair at my school
It's interesting the number of 'Mehricans that didn't have science fairs. Are these no longer a thing?
@MsELizardBeth I just think is something only some schools ever did and movies made it look more common I never had one and I went to School from the mid 60 to 70s
@don Same here - never heard of them until I started seeing them in movies and on TV; I also went to school in the '60s and '70s.
@MsELizardBeth Well, golly. I also was schooled in the 60s and 70s in the deep south and we had science fairs starting in fourth or fifth grade.
@AnotherDawn They start torturing kids from 2nd grade on here in our part of NC. I was not a fan as an unorganized, procrastinating child... and I'm even less enthused as an unorganized, procrastinating mom. ;)
@modmamajama Well, have I got a great science fair project for you. Easy and actually interesting. Have your kid take her/his temperature several times a day, before eating, after eating, after bath, after exercise, etc., for about a week. Graph it or just make a goofy poster board with the results. Call it "Is 98.6 Degrees Really The Normal Body Temperature?" Or, "Variables In Body Temperature With Activity" or whatever. Simple but winnable!
saw lots of these from the derpy types in public schools:
@tehtruth
The only science fair I really participated in, I basically just benchmarked and compared about 10 different file compression tools on multiple metrics. (How long did it take for different kinds of files? What was the compressed size?) Things like Lha, Arj, Zip, Arc, etc. I don't think Rar was a think yet back then. I do remember that PKZip was sort of the middle-of-the-road thing, and yet it mostly won the battle in the long run.
@kazriko You might be interested in the awesome BBS Documentary: http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/ which covers the compressors of the time and has some interviews with the creators (All the interviews are on the Internet Archive if you're interested).
Science fair was awesome. Had one while I was in elementary school (2nd grade?) and got first place! Booyah! Something about mirrors, water, reflection, rainbows ;) all I vividly remember is the coolest kid in school gave me a high five when he saw my first place ribbon! LOL
I grew up in a shitty school district that didn't have science fairs. They were mostly grooming us for blue-collar jobs so intelligence and creativity weren't rewarded.
chalk me up as another vote in the "we never had Science Fairs" camp
My best science fair project was the year (I think I was about 12 or 13 at the time) that I bought hundreds of germanium diodes and a project perf board from Radio shack and spent a week constructing a base 10 to binary converter matrix circuit. You would type a number on a set of input keys and the output would display the number in binary. Basically it was a hand built computer chip that was a foot square, and it worked perfectly. This was in about 1975 when hand held calculators were just becoming mainstream and PCs were still something only big corporations and universities had.
For some unknown reason the judges of the fair included teachers from many non-science departments. The science and math teachers loved it, but I don't think the english and gym teachers understood quite what it was so it didn't do well. I was proud as hell of it though.
Yeah, I was one of those nerd kids; I even had a slide rule and knew how to use it.
@Steve7654 i am in medical school and mentioned use of a slide rule in passing. this kid (about 22) said, "what is that? like a dance from the 80s?" how hopeless these children would be had they taken any maths without the TI-83...
@Steve7654 I still have my slide rule from 1975. I might remember how to do a couple things on it.
@Steve7654 I was in the first high school class that was not required to learn slide rule. My dad made me anyway. I can still do some stuff with it. My first year in college the bookstore dumped all their slide rules for $1 a box. Picketts mostly. I picked up some interesting special function ones; electrical engineering, etc. I also got one that was a dual kit: one regular and one mini, again, for $1.
Another year I sealed some beans and water soaked cotton inside of an airtight glass bottle and weighed it every day. As the beans sprouted and grew inside the bottle it gained mass, proving that plants can convert light energy directly into mass since there was nowhere else for the increase to come from. At the time this was theoretically impossible,
Right next to mine was a night before "experiment" one of the jocks made, called "the effects of mustard and ketchup on grass", and another kid found a roadkill animal and tried to extract and reassemble the skeleton with wire and glue. It smelled horrible, and the teachers moved it out back of the building,
I just loved science fair week.
Never had a science fair as a kid either, BUT, as an adult, I worked for an agency that provided judges to the local schools for their fairs, so I got to judge 3-4 years. It was great fun, saw bunches that were clearly Mom/Dad, many less than 'meh' projects, a couple that were disturbingly wrong and 1-2 that really shone. The ones that were best were not the 'hardest science' ones, but ones that showed the passion and interest of the kid.
We always moved at the end of the year, my dad's contracts ended in December. So, I never got to participate in a science fair. (Started, but never finished any projects.)
I never experienced a science fair growing up either. But who knew it wouldn't matter, as I turned out to be a bonafide mad scientist anyway.
I had to do two different science fair presentations. One was about magnetism which was so half assed it was funny. I hated the scientific process. Why do I need to test this shit? It's already been proven! I remember the day I had to present that one because 1), my father got the family tickets to Phantom of the Opera (back when there was like a 2 year waiting list) so I missed school that day and had to come back that evening to present, and 2) that was also the night that President Bush the elder announced that we were going into Kuwait. They played his address over the loudspeaker while we had our silly presentations out.
The second was about insulation and heat transfer. This one I kind of cared about because it was kind of fun. My dad bought me a digital meat thermometer, so I basically took water that was heated to a specific temperature and then put it in a container with the thermometer. I then put different materials around the hot water and measured the initial temperature and then the temp after 10 or so minutes. I used things like insulation, newspapers, rocks, sand, anything that could surround the hot water (don't forget the control, air). I remember finding out that newspaper did the best at insulating the heat, which kind of impressed my teachers. I got to present this to two other science fair competitions because it was so interesting. Someone suggested that shredded newspaper might be considered a budget alternative to insulation for lower cost home insulation and be good for recycling.
@BillLehecka and of course today blown cellulose (ground up paper, blown into wall cavities) insulation is quite common in houses.
They left out "failure"
Science fairs at my house were family affairs. When my older brother had to do one he decided on building a stupid volcano. But to add a twist we, the family decided to build Vesuvius, complete with Pompeii. With exacto knives and tons of Ivory soap everyone carved tiny little houses which we painted with cheap water colors. My mom was particularly good at doing various temples. They were little works of art. The finished volcano and city was just amazing. Dad, the chemist came up with some kind of concoction to make the volcano smoke and spew sparks. The science of the project was lame, but the magnificence of the city was so impressive brother got an A. I should say, the family got an A.
The family did it again a few years later for a history fair I was involved in. We built, Rome, all 7 hills.
We should have bought shares in Ivory soap.
@Teripie Got pics?
@duodec No dammit. Was back in the 60's. Film in a family with 5 kids was not wasted on such things.
@Teripie Isn't amazing to think that modern kids have EVERYTHING in their lives captured? Major milestones in my life went unphotographed, the youngest has 40 pictures of her smearing the glass at the hippo tank in the aquarium.
My cousin's kids always had really cool stuff they did. My cousin is an engineer, his kids (girls) are also interested in that - one keeps entering high school robot competitions and her team keeps placing and she got early acceptance at, I think, MIT (some big name engineering school in the north east anyway). They did all sorts of cool shit, some of which would be brought to family gatherings to show off. What I did always looked lame in comparison. Of course I lived in a household where no one did science and we barely had any tools (but we did have art supplies LOL) so it was all on me, but I enjoyed even though I never placed.
I remember grade-school science fairs, and then helping out with the Penn State Ogontz campus one for middle school kids when I was in middle school.