1029 science project ideas, from class 1 to college.

What it shows

A small compass placed near a bar magnet points along the field at that spot. Joining many such points draws the field lines, which loop from the north pole round to the south pole and crowd together where the field is strongest.

You will need

• A bar magnet
• A small plotting compass (available at stationery shops) or the needle compass from the project above
• A sheet of white paper and a pencil
• Tape to hold the magnet
• A second bar magnet for the extension

Safety: Keep magnets away from phones, cards and small children.

Take it further: Sprinkle iron filings collected with a magnet from sand on a paper over the magnet, and compare the pattern with your compass map.

What it shows

A dark surface soaks up most of the sunlight that falls on it and gets hot, while a white or shiny surface reflects most of it and stays cooler. This is why we wear light colours in summer and why solar heaters are painted black.

You will need

• Three identical empty tins or small bottles (free)
• Black paint, white paint and aluminium foil
• Water and a measuring cup
• A thermometer (a digital one from a chemist works well)
• A sunny spot and a clock

Safety: An adult should check the tin edges are not sharp, and the water can get hot enough to be uncomfortable, so handle it with care.

Take it further: Add a tin painted red and one painted blue and find where they sit between black and white.

What it shows

Heat flows from hot things to cooler surroundings. Materials like thermocol, cloth and air pockets slow this flow and are called insulators, while metal lets heat through quickly. A lid matters because much heat escapes with rising warm air and steam.

You will need

• Four cups of similar size: steel, glass, ceramic (kulhad or china) and a thermocol or paper cup
• Hot water from a kettle, handled by an adult
• A thermometer
• A measuring cup
• Cardboard squares as lids
• A clock and a notebook

Safety: An adult must pour the hot water. Use water from a kettle that has been allowed to cool a little, not boiling, and keep the cups away from the table edge.

Take it further: Design and build the best insulated cup you can from waste materials and test it against a shop-bought flask.

What it shows

When one marble rolls into a line of touching marbles, one marble shoots off the far end; roll two in and two leave. The push, or momentum, passes right through the line, as in a Newton’s cradle.

You will need

• Six to ten marbles of the same size
• A grooved wooden ruler, or two rulers taped side by side with a gap between them
• Books to prop one end of the ruler as a small ramp
• A smooth table
• A larger or heavier marble for the extension

Safety: Keep marbles away from children under five who may put them in their mouths, and pick up any that roll on the floor.

Take it further: Build a hanging Newton’s cradle from five marbles glued to threads and a cardboard frame.

What it shows

A strip of paper with two folded wings spins as it falls, because air pushing on the slanted wings makes it turn. Longer wings catch more air and slow the fall, while adding paper clips makes it fall faster. Air resistance is a real force.

You will need

• A few sheets of used paper (free)
• Scissors
• Paper clips
• A ruler
• A stopwatch or phone timer
• A chair or a staircase to drop from safely

Safety: Drop from a chair only with an adult holding it steady, and never lean over a stair railing.

Take it further: Try the same helicopter made from thin paper, thick card and a plastic sheet, and see which falls slowest.

What it shows

Air rushing out of the balloon’s neck pushes the balloon the other way along the string. The bigger the balloon, the further it travels. This is Newton’s third law, the same rule that lifts a real rocket.

You will need

• Balloons, long ones work best
• About 5 metres of smooth string or fishing line
• A drinking straw
• Tape
• A measuring tape
• Two chairs to tie the string between

Safety: Balloon pieces are a choking hazard for very young children; keep them away from the face when the balloon is released.

Take it further: Fix two balloons to the same straw, one behind the other, and release the second only when the first is nearly empty to make a two-stage rocket.

What it shows

A wedge turns a push on its wide back into strong sideways pushes at its thin edge, which split material apart. Thin, long wedges split clay with less force than short, blunt ones, which is why knives and axes are sharpened.

You will need

• A block of modelling clay or soft dough
• Three cardboard or wooden wedges of the same height but different thickness, or a butter knife, a ruler and a wooden block
• A stack of coins or a cup of sand to act as a measured push
• A ruler and a notebook

Safety: Use blunt cardboard, plastic or wooden wedges only, no sharp knives, and an adult must cut any wooden wedges.

Take it further: Test the same wedges on a bar of soap and on a potato and see whether the ranking stays the same.

What it shows

The back of a shiny spoon is a convex mirror and always shows a small, upright, wide view. The bowl side is a concave mirror: it shows your face upside down from far away and large and upright when very close.

You will need

• A large polished steel serving spoon
• A small plane mirror for comparison
• A pencil or a small toy to look at
• A ruler
• A sunny window or a torch

Safety: Never use a concave spoon or mirror to focus sunlight on skin or paper, and do not look at the Sun in it.

Take it further: Use a concave shaving mirror to form an image of a window on a sheet of paper held at the right distance.

What it shows

Sunlight looks white but is a mixture of colours. Water with a mirror in it acts like a prism, bending each colour by a slightly different amount, so the reflected beam fans out into red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet on the wall.

You will need

• A shallow bowl or a tray of water
• A small flat mirror
• A sheet of white paper or a white wall
• Direct sunlight through a window, or a torch in a dark room
• A pencil to trace the colours

Safety: Never look directly at the Sun or shine the reflected sunbeam into anyone’s eyes.

Take it further: Make a spinning colour disc with the seven colours and show that they blend back into near white when it spins.

What it shows

A pencil standing in a glass of water looks broken at the surface because light bends when it passes from water into air. Different liquids bend light by different amounts, and a coin hidden under the rim of a cup reappears when water is poured in.

You will need

• A straight pencil or a straw
• Two clear glasses
• Water and some cooking oil
• A coin and an opaque cup
• A notebook for drawings

Take it further: Shine a torch beam through a glass of water onto a wall and trace how the beam shifts when the water is added.

What it shows

A ruler held over the edge of a table and twanged vibrates and makes a sound. A short overhang vibrates fast and gives a high note; a long overhang vibrates slowly and gives a low note. A harder twang makes a louder sound but not a different note.

You will need

• A 30 cm plastic or wooden ruler
• A table with a firm edge
• A pencil to mark lengths
• A free tuner or sound app on a phone, if available
• A notebook

Take it further: Build a one-string instrument from a plank, a nail, a guitar string and a bottle as a bridge, and move the bridge to change the pitch.

What it shows

For a graphite pencil lead at steady temperature, the current through it is directly proportional to the voltage across it. The V against I graph is a straight line through the origin and its slope is the resistance (Ohm’s law, V = IR).

You will need

• A 2B pencil sharpened at both ends, or a bare 4B lead
• Four AA cells and a battery holder (or four separate cells and tape)
• A digital multimeter (about Rs 250, or borrow from the school lab)
• Four jumper wires or wires with crocodile clips
• A 100 ohm resistor from a repair shop as a check
• Graph paper and a pencil

Safety: Use only dry cells, never a mains adaptor. Take readings quickly and let the lead cool between readings, because a warm lead changes its resistance and the graph will bend.

Take it further: Measure the resistance of a 2H and a 6B pencil and explain the difference by the amount of graphite in each.

What it shows

The resistance of a wire is directly proportional to its length and inversely proportional to its area of cross section (R = rho L / A). Doubling the length doubles R, and twisting two equal wires together halves it.

You will need

• About 2 m of nichrome heater wire (from an electrical repair shop, under Rs 40) or thin iron binding wire
• A metre scale and a wooden plank to tape the wire along
• Two AA cells in a holder
• A digital multimeter
• Crocodile clip leads
• A screw gauge from the lab, or the wire gauge printed on the packet

Safety: Nichrome gets warm when current flows; keep the circuit closed only while reading. Cut wire with pliers, not a knife, and an adult must help with the cut ends, which are sharp.

Take it further: Repeat with wires of two different gauges and plot R against 1/A for a fixed length.

What it shows

The terminal voltage of a cell falls as it supplies more current because of its internal resistance, following V = E minus I r. A graph of V against I is a straight line whose intercept is the emf E and whose slope is minus r.

You will need

• One fresh and one used AA or D cell
• Five resistors: 4.7, 10, 22, 47 and 100 ohm (1 W or 2 W, from an electronics shop)
• A digital multimeter
• Crocodile clip leads
• Graph paper

Safety: Never short the cell directly with a wire; it heats fast. Keep each reading under ten seconds so the cell does not warm up or run down during the experiment.

Take it further: Measure r of two cells in series and in parallel and compare with the expected 2r and r/2.

What it shows

Pure water barely conducts, but dissolved salt gives free ions that carry current. The current through a salt solution rises with concentration at first and then levels off as the ions crowd each other.

You will need

• Two carbon rods pulled from dead zinc-carbon cells (an adult must open them) or two graphite pencil leads
• Common salt, a teaspoon and a kitchen weighing scale
• A 250 ml measuring jug and five identical glasses
• Three AA cells in a holder
• A digital multimeter
• Crocodile clip leads and a cardboard strip to hold the rods 3 cm apart

Safety: Cells only. Do not use the solutions afterwards for anything else. Wash hands after handling the carbon rods and wipe up spills, since salt water corrodes metal.

Take it further: Repeat at 10, 25 and 40 degrees Celsius for one concentration to show that conductivity of a solution rises with temperature.

What it shows

The strength of an electromagnet grows with the number of turns of wire and with the current through it. Counting the pins it lifts for 20, 40, 60 and 80 turns gives a clear upward trend.

You will need

• A 10 cm iron nail or bolt
• About 5 m of enamelled copper wire (28 to 30 SWG, from an electrical shop)
• Two AA cells in a holder, plus a third cell for the current test
• A box of steel pins or paper clips
• Sandpaper to strip the wire ends
• A multimeter to measure current (optional)

Safety: The coil warms quickly; connect for only a few seconds per trial and let it cool. Pins are sharp; count them on a tray. Cells only.

Take it further: Compare an iron core, a steel bolt and no core at 80 turns, and explain which stays magnetised after the current stops.

What it shows

Two different metals joined at two points produce a small voltage when the two junctions are at different temperatures (the Seebeck effect). The voltage rises roughly in proportion to the temperature difference, which is how thermocouple thermometers work.

You will need

• 30 cm of bare copper wire and 30 cm of iron binding wire (or a steel paper clip straightened)
• A digital multimeter that reads millivolts
• A cup of ice water and a cup of hot water from a kettle
• A kitchen or lab thermometer
• Sandpaper and a small pair of pliers

Safety: An adult must handle the hot water and the kettle. Do not put the junction into a flame; hot water up to 90 degrees Celsius is enough for a clear reading.

Take it further: Join ten copper-iron pairs in series as a thermopile and show that the voltage is ten times larger.

What it shows

An LED only begins to conduct above a threshold voltage that is higher for colours of shorter wavelength: red about 1.8 V, green about 2.1 V, blue about 2.8 V. The threshold energy e V roughly equals the photon energy h c / lambda, so this experiment gives an estimate of Planck’s constant.

You will need

• Red, yellow, green, blue and white 5 mm LEDs (about Rs 2 each)
• A 10 kilo-ohm potentiometer (variable resistor)
• Three AA cells in a holder (4.5 V)
• A 220 ohm resistor
• A digital multimeter
• A breadboard or crocodile clips, and graph paper

Safety: Keep the 220 ohm resistor in series always, or the LED burns out. Never look straight into the blue or white LED at full brightness. Cells only.

Take it further: Measure the LED voltage in the dark with a bright torch shining on it to show the small photovoltaic effect in reverse.

What it shows

A capacitor charging through a resistor reaches 63 percent of the supply voltage after one time constant tau = R C, and discharges to 37 percent in the same time. With a large capacitor and a large resistor the process takes tens of seconds, slow enough to time by hand and to plot.

You will need

• A 1000 microfarad, 16 V electrolytic capacitor (about Rs 10)
• Resistors of 10, 22 and 47 kilo-ohm
• Three AA cells in a holder (4.5 V)
• A digital multimeter on DC volts
• A stopwatch or phone
• A red LED and a 220 ohm resistor for the discharge demonstration
• A breadboard or crocodile clips

Safety: Connect the electrolytic capacitor with its marked negative stripe to the negative side of the cells; reversed, it can heat and burst. Discharge it through a resistor before handling. Cells only.

Take it further: Use the discharge curve to measure an unknown resistor, or an unlabelled capacitor, from the measured time constant.

What it shows

A small compass points along the magnetic field at each point, so plotting its direction step by step traces the field lines of a magnet. A wire carrying current also deflects the compass, showing that electric current produces a magnetic field (Oersted’s experiment).

You will need

• Two bar magnets
• A small plotting compass (about Rs 30) or five cheap button compasses
• Large sheets of white paper and a pencil
• A 1 m length of thick insulated copper wire
• Two AA cells in a holder and a switch
• Iron filings in a salt shaker for the optional picture

Safety: Cells only, and close the switch only for a few seconds at a time because the wire shorts the cells. Keep iron filings away from eyes and off the magnet surface (wrap the magnet in paper).

Take it further: Map the field of a coil of 20 turns with current flowing and compare it with the bar magnet map.

What it shows

A compass at the centre of a vertical coil set in the magnetic north-south plane is deflected by the coil’s field, and the tangent of the deflection angle is proportional to the current (tan theta = B_coil / B_H). This measures current and even the horizontal component of Earth’s field.

You will need

• A cardboard ring or plastic lid about 15 cm across for the coil frame
• About 15 m of enamelled copper wire for 20 to 30 turns
• A plotting compass with a degree scale, or a small compass placed on a printed protractor
• Resistors of 22, 47, 100 and 220 ohm
• Two AA cells in a holder and a switch
• A multimeter on milliamps
• A wooden base and a spirit level or a smartphone level app

Safety: Cells only, and keep the current below about 100 mA so the coil stays cool. Keep steel objects and phones well away from the compass during readings.

Take it further: Repeat with 10 and 40 turns and show the slope changes in proportion to N.