1029 science project ideas, from class 1 to college.

What it shows

Forwarded claims are checked with a three-step method: who says it, when, and what do reliable sources say. It teaches how to stop false information from spreading.

You will need

• A computer, laptop or phone with a browser (free)
• A browser and the websites of established newspapers, a government health or science department and recognised fact-checking organisations
• Five forwarded messages or claims from family groups (copy the text, remove names and numbers)
• A notebook and a pencil

Safety: Do not click links inside suspicious messages, and never forward a message you have not checked. Remove personal details before sharing any text in class.

Take it further: Run a quick test: show the same claim with and without a source to classmates and see which they believe more.

What it shows

Twenty questions with known answers are put to an AI chatbot and the answers are checked against textbooks, giving an accuracy percentage and a list of confident mistakes. It shows that AI can be useful but must be verified.

You will need

• A computer, laptop or phone with a browser (free)
• A free AI chatbot that your school or family allows, used with an adult present
• A textbook, atlas or reliable reference for checking
• A spreadsheet program: LibreOffice Calc (free) or Google Sheets (free)
• A notebook and a pencil

Safety: Use the chatbot with an adult, never type your name, address, school or photos, and follow the age rules of the tool.

Take it further: Repeat the test a month later or with a second chatbot and compare accuracy.

What it shows

A free browser tool learns to tell a pencil, an eraser and a sharpener from webcam examples, and testing shows how the number and variety of examples change accuracy. It teaches how machine learning learns from data.

You will need

• A computer, laptop or phone with a browser (free)
• A computer with a webcam and Google’s Teachable Machine at teachablemachine.withgoogle.com (free, runs in the browser)
• Three stationery items: a pencil, an eraser and a sharpener
• A plain background such as a sheet of white paper
• A notebook and a pencil

Safety: Point the camera only at the objects and not at faces. Read what the tool says about where images are stored and do not save the project online with images of people.

Take it further: Add a fourth class called nothing with only the empty background so the model can say that no object is present.

What it shows

Apps on a phone are checked for the permissions they hold, such as camera, microphone and location, and compared with what they need. It teaches how to protect privacy by limiting access.

You will need

• A family phone with its owner’s permission and a parent or teacher present
• The phone’s Settings page for Apps and Permissions or Privacy
• A spreadsheet program: LibreOffice Calc (free) or Google Sheets (free)
• A notebook and a pencil

Safety: Only audit a phone with its owner’s agreement and an adult present. Do not change settings on a phone you do not own, and do not note down any passwords or personal data.

Take it further: Repeat after a month and see whether any apps changed their permissions after an update.

What it shows

Short paragraphs written by students and by an AI tool are mixed and shown to volunteers who guess the author. The results show how hard it is to tell and what clues people use.

You will need

• A computer, laptop or phone with a browser (free)
• A free AI tool used with an adult, a word processor and a spreadsheet
• 6 short paragraphs of 80 words on a simple topic, written by students
• Twenty volunteers
• A notebook and a pencil

Safety: Use the AI tool with an adult and give it no personal details. Show paragraphs without names and use the test only for learning, never to accuse anyone of cheating.

Take it further: Test whether a longer paragraph is easier to identify than a short one.

What it shows

Eight number cards are sorted by two methods while counting comparisons and swaps. It shows how different algorithms reach the same answer with different amounts of work.

You will need

• Eight small paper cards numbered with random numbers from 1 to 50 (cut from old paper)
• A table, a notebook and a pencil
• A friend to count and check

Take it further: Write bubble sort in Python with nested for loops and count its swaps with a variable, then check against your hand count.

What it shows

Looking for a roll number in a sorted list is done one by one and then by halving, and the steps are counted. It shows why binary search is so much faster for large lists.

You will need

• A sorted list of 64 roll numbers written on a sheet or in a spreadsheet
• A coin or a pencil to mark the current guess
• A notebook and a friend to pick the target number
• A notebook and a pencil

Take it further: Write both searches in Python for a list of 1000 numbers and count steps with a variable.

What it shows

Players and match scores in two tables give totals, averages and strike rates with JOIN, GROUP BY and HAVING. It shows how statistics in sports are calculated by queries.

You will need

• A computer, laptop or phone with a browser (free)
• DB Browser for SQLite (free) or a free online SQLite page
• Scores of 8 players in 5 matches from your school or street team, or made up
• A notebook and a pencil

Take it further: Add a bowling table with wickets and runs conceded and compute economy rate.

What it shows

One program finds primes with the Sieve of Eratosthenes and generates Fibonacci numbers whose consecutive ratio settles near 1.618. It links number patterns to loops and lists.

You will need

• A computer, laptop or phone with a browser (free)
• Python 3 with IDLE, or the free Thonny editor, or an online Python runner (all free)
• A notebook and a pencil

Take it further: Plot the primes below 100 as a spiral using turtle (Ulam spiral) and look for diagonal lines.

What it shows

A solar panel is not a battery: its voltage and current change with the load. By plotting current against voltage and power against voltage, a student finds the maximum power point, fill factor and effect of shading, which are the basis of MPPT charge controllers.

You will need

• A 6 V, 1 W or 2 W small solar panel
• A 100 Ω, 5 W rheostat or a 1 kΩ potentiometer with a 10 Ω series resistor
• Two digital multimeters
• A lux meter app or a reference cell
• Cardboard strips for shading
• A spreadsheet

Safety: Panels of this size are low voltage. Do not stare at bright reflected sun. Rheostats get warm, so an adult must be present, and use fixed connectors rather than loose wires.

Take it further: Build an Arduino I-V tracer that sweeps a MOSFET load automatically and plots the curve on the laptop.

What it shows

Mini fridges for medicines and vaccines in remote places use Peltier modules, which pump heat electrically without gas. The project builds a small insulated box and shows that how well the hot side is cooled decides how cold the box becomes.

You will need

• A TEC1-12706 Peltier module, 12 V, run at reduced power
• Two aluminium heat sinks and a 12 V fan
• A 12 V, 5 A ready adapter or a 12 V battery
• A thermocol box with a lid
• Thermal paste
• Two digital thermometers or DS18B20 sensors
• A switch and wires

Safety: The hot side of the module can exceed 70 degrees and the module can be destroyed without a heat sink. Never run it without the fan. Use a sealed 12 V supply only. An adult must supervise.

Take it further: Add a DS18B20 sensor and an Arduino with a relay to hold the box at 8 degrees by switching the module on and off.

What it shows

Selecting a motor for a robot or pump needs its torque-speed curve and efficiency. A homemade rope brake loads a small motor with known torque, while voltage, current and rpm are measured to plot the characteristics and show the back EMF effect.

You will need

• A 12 V DC motor with a 3 cm pulley on its shaft
• A cord, two kitchen spring balances (0 to 1 kg) or two 100 g weight sets
• A 12 V battery or sealed adapter
• Two multimeters
• An IR tachometer made from a sensor and Arduino, or a phone app tachometer
• A wooden stand with clamps
• A ruler and thermometer

Safety: Use a battery or sealed adapter only. Keep hair, clothing and fingers away from the pulley. The motor and cord will get hot, so keep each run short. An adult must supervise.

Take it further: Repeat at 6 V and 9 V supply and show that the whole line moves down in speed with the same slope.

What it shows

Bicycle dynamos and wind turbines make electricity from a moving magnet near a coil. The project builds a model generator and tests how peak voltage depends on the speed of rotation and the number of turns, which is Faraday’s law in action.

You will need

• A cardboard or wooden disc with four neodymium magnets fixed at the edge
• A motor or a hand crank to spin it (a 12 V geared motor with variable battery voltage)
• Three bobbins wound with 100, 200 and 400 turns of enamelled wire
• A sound-card scope app or a multimeter with AC range
• An IR tachometer or phone app to measure rpm
• A stand, glue, tape

Safety: Neodymium magnets are very strong and can pinch fingers or shatter. Keep them away from phones, cards and pacemakers. An adult must handle the magnets and the motor.

Take it further: Add a bridge rectifier and a 1000 µF capacitor to get DC and light a 5 V LED at the highest speed.

What it shows

A magnet dropped through a coil induces a voltage pulse, and one dropped through a copper pipe falls slowly because of eddy currents. The project records both events and measures how induced voltage depends on speed and how Lenz’s law slows the fall.

You will need

• A coil of about 500 turns of enamelled wire on a plastic pipe
• A neodymium magnet that slides inside the pipe
• A copper pipe about 50 cm long and a plastic pipe of the same size
• A 3.5 mm audio jack and a 10 kΩ resistor in series
• A laptop with free audio-recording software such as Audacity
• A stopwatch or phone slow-motion video

Safety: Strong magnets can pinch skin and snap together hard. An adult must handle them. Never connect the coil directly to a phone input without the series resistor.

Take it further: Cut a slit along the copper pipe and show that the magnet now falls faster because eddy currents are broken.

What it shows

Buildings stand on foundations that spread the load over soil. The project loads small square footings on a tray of sand and shows that a wider footing carries more total load but the same or lower pressure, and that burying the footing raises its capacity.

You will need

• A strong plastic tub or wooden box 40 x 40 x 30 cm filled with dry sand
• Square footings 3 cm, 5 cm and 7 cm cut from wood
• A loading rod and a bucket or plate
• Sand or water in bottles as weights
• A dial gauge or ruler with a pointer
• A kitchen scale

Safety: Dust from sand can irritate eyes and lungs: wear a mask. Keep the load stack low to avoid toppling. An adult must supervise.

Take it further: Repeat with wet sand and with a clay-sand mix to show how water and cohesion change the result.

What it shows

Floors, shelves and bridges bend under load. A strip of wood supported at both ends and loaded at the middle bends by an amount that depends on its depth, length and Young’s modulus. The project measures the deflection and calculates the modulus for different woods.

You will need

• Strips of wood or bamboo of about 60 cm length with rectangular section (for example 2 x 1 cm)
• Two knife-edge supports made from nails or metal rods
• A hanger and 50 g weights
• A metre rule and a pointer or a dial gauge
• A vernier caliper
• A spreadsheet

Safety: Do not overload the strip because it can snap. Keep your feet away from the falling weights. An adult must supervise.

Take it further: Test a steel ruler and a bamboo strip and rank the materials by stiffness and strength to weight ratio.

What it shows

Farmers and city planners ask whether the monsoon is changing. A student can download a public rainfall data set, clean it with pandas and plot monthly averages, yearly totals and a trend line, which teaches data cleaning, statistics and honest conclusions.

You will need

• A laptop with Python 3, pandas, matplotlib and Jupyter or Thonny
• A free monthly rainfall data set for an Indian district or state from an open government data portal or meteorological source (downloaded as CSV)
• A notebook for the report
• Internet only to download the data

Safety: Download data only from official public portals and check the licence terms. Back up your work regularly.

Take it further: Compare two districts and test whether their yearly rainfall changes are correlated using a correlation coefficient.

What it shows

People who buy a second-hand vehicle want a fair price. A regression model learns from listed prices, age and kilometres how much a scooter is worth. A student can build it from an open data set or from 100 prices noted from classified advertisements, and check how accurate it is.

You will need

• A laptop with Python 3, pandas, numpy, matplotlib and scikit-learn
• A CSV of used vehicle prices from an open data portal, or one that you collect (age, kilometres, company, price)
• Jupyter or Thonny
• A notebook for the report

Safety: Use only public data and do not include phone numbers or names of sellers in your file.

Take it further: Try a decision tree regressor and a random forest and compare their errors with the linear model.

What it shows

A first machine learning project should show how a computer decides from examples. The k-nearest neighbours method classifies a new flower or wine by looking at its closest known examples. A student tests how the choice of k and scaling of the features change accuracy.

You will need

• A laptop with Python 3, numpy, pandas, matplotlib and scikit-learn
• The iris and wine data sets that come with scikit-learn (open data)
• Jupyter or Thonny
• A notebook for the report

Safety: No special safety needs. Save your work often.

Take it further: Collect measurements of 30 leaves from your neighbourhood and train a classifier to recognise two local plant species.