Science projects
Your Science Exhibition Guide
Choose a project, build it, present it and answer the judges with confidence
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Science project idea finder
Find a project by class, subject and type. Every idea explains the science it shows, what you need, how long it takes and how to stay safe, with free ebooks and ready-made kits if you need them. 930 ideas have numbered steps and viva questions on their own page.
Want a complete build with diagrams? 16 free detailed project guides

Idea finder
Choose your class and what interests you, or search for a word such as magnet, solar, heart or robot. Open any card for a summary, or its title for the full page with the science, the steps and the viva questions.
Sound level is measured in decibels, a scale where every 10 decibels sounds about twice as loud. Measuring at the same spots at different times of day gives a noise map that shows where and when levels pass the limits set for residential and silence zones.
Safety: Measure from the footpath with an adult near busy roads; never stand on the road to take a reading.
Take it further: Measure before and after a festival night and compare the levels.
A census records every tree in an area with its species, girth and canopy, the same way city forest departments do. The data show which species dominate, which trees are oldest, how much ground is shaded, and where new trees would help most.
Safety: Do not climb trees or pull branches. Watch for ants and bees on trunks.
Take it further: Repeat the girth measurements a year later and see which trees grew most.
Even one square metre of garden or wasteland holds dozens of kinds of living things: grasses, weeds, ants, beetles, spiders, snails, birds that visit. Watching the same patch daily and recording every species shows how rich ordinary ground is and how it changes with the weather.
Safety: Look, do not touch; some caterpillars and plants cause itching. Wash hands after each visit.
Take it further: Compare your square with a square on bare, swept ground and count the difference.
Birds are easiest to count at dawn when they call and feed. Counting every bird seen or heard for ten minutes at fixed points, a method called a point count, shows which species live near you and how a park, a road and a water body differ in bird life.
Safety: Go with an adult at dawn, and stay away from water edges.
Take it further: Repeat the count in winter and look for migratory ducks and wagtails that were absent in summer.
When an LDR is placed in series with an LED, more light lowers the LDR resistance, more current flows and the LED glows brighter. The LED becomes a simple meter for how bright the room is.
Safety: Battery power only. Do not point a bright torch into anyone’s eyes.
Take it further: Put a multimeter on the current setting in the loop and make a table of milliamperes against each place you tested.
Water conducts electricity only through dissolved ions. Two probes in a liquid feed a tiny current into a transistor, which amplifies it to light an LED. Distilled water gives nothing, tap water a faint glow and salt water a bright one.
Safety: Battery power only. Dry your hands before handling the circuit, and rinse the probes between cups.
Take it further: Add a multimeter in the base lead and record microamperes for each liquid instead of judging brightness by eye.
A magnet on a spoke closes a reed switch on the fork once every turn, flashing an LED. Counting flashes in a known time and knowing the wheel circumference gives the bicycle speed, the same method a bike speedometer uses.
Safety: Test with the bicycle upside down or on a stand, never while riding on the road. Keep hands clear of the spokes.
Take it further: Feed the reed switch pulses into an Arduino and display the speed on a small screen.
The electrical output of a solar cell falls as the light strikes it at a shallower angle, because the same beam is spread over a bigger area. Measuring voltage and current at known tilt angles shows why rooftop panels in India are tilted roughly at the latitude angle.
Safety: Do not look at the sun. Work in the shade of a hat and take breaks; test in the morning or late afternoon rather than at midday in summer.
Take it further: Build a two-position tracker that tilts the cell by hand each hour and compare total output with a fixed cell.
An electric current heats a resistor, and the heat produced in a fixed time is V squared divided by R, times t. Doubling the voltage on the same coil makes it deliver four times the heat.
Safety: An adult must check the coil and the connections; the coil and the cup can get hot, so never touch the coil with a bare hand while the current flows, and keep the switch off between readings. Use only cells, never mains electricity.
Take it further: Keep the voltage fixed and use coils of two different lengths to show that heat in a fixed time is inversely proportional to R at constant voltage.
A cell delivers the most power to a load when the load resistance equals the cell’s own internal resistance. The power curve rises, peaks and falls as the load is changed.
Safety: An adult must supervise the low-ohm resistors, which can warm up; keep the circuit connected only while reading the meter.
Take it further: Repeat the experiment with a half-used pack and show that its internal resistance, and so the power peak position, has moved.
Two resistors in series share the cell’s voltage in proportion to their resistances. Replacing one with an LDR makes the output voltage change with light, which is how many sensors work.
Safety: Use cells only. An adult should check the wiring before the cells are connected.
Take it further: Use the LDR divider output to drive a transistor that switches on an LED when the room darkens, and find the light level at which it switches.
A silicon diode conducts almost nothing until the forward voltage reaches about 0.6 to 0.7 V, then the current rises steeply. In reverse it passes almost no current.
Safety: An adult must check the circuit before connecting; never connect the diode directly across a cell without the 100 ohm resistor, as the current would be large.
Take it further: Compare a red LED’s knee voltage, about 1.8 V, with the silicon diode on the same axes.
Far from a magnet the field along its axis falls roughly as the cube of the distance. A compass needle’s deflection, compared with the Earth’s field, lets you check this from a log graph.
Safety: Neodymium magnets can pinch fingers and break; an adult must handle them and keep them away from phones, cards and pacemakers.
Take it further: Repeat in the broadside position and show that the field there is half the end-on value at the same distance.
A bulb’s filament gets hotter as the current rises, and a hotter metal resists more. The graph of voltage against current therefore bends and the bulb does not obey Ohm’s law.
Safety: An adult must check the wiring. Do not push a 2.5 V bulb above 3 V: it will burn out and the glass could pop. Use cells only.
Take it further: Measure a pencil-lead resistor over the same range and show that its graph is much closer to a straight line.
At any junction the currents entering equal the currents leaving, and round any closed loop the voltages add to zero. A two-loop board with two cells shows both laws with measured values.
Safety: An adult must check the wiring. Keep the board low-voltage; the resistors may warm up, so disconnect between readings.
Take it further: Swap the polarity of one cell and predict, then measure, the new currents.
Faraday’s law says the emf in a coil equals the rate of change of magnetic flux. A magnet falling faster through the same coil gives a larger voltage pulse.
Safety: Neodymium magnets are brittle and can pinch; an adult must handle them. Catch the magnet on a cushion so it does not chip.
Take it further: Time the fall with a phone video and compare the measured speed with √(2gh) to estimate the drag.
A convex lens forms a real, inverted image on a screen at a distance that depends on where the object is. The lens formula links the two distances to the focal length, and a graph of 1/v against 1/u gives f accurately.
Safety: Never point the lens at the Sun; an adult must make the cross cut in the paper.
Take it further: Measure the magnification v / u for each position and plot it against v to find a second value of f.
If an object and a screen are further apart than four focal lengths, there are two lens positions that give a sharp image. The distance between them gives f from f = (D² − d²) / 4D.
Safety: Do not look at the torch beam directly and never aim the lens at the Sun.
Take it further: Measure the sizes of both images, h1 and h2, and show that the object size is √(h1 × h2).
The size, position and nature of the image in a concave mirror change as the object moves from far away to inside the focal length. The mirror formula and magnification can be checked with real readings.
Safety: Do not let the mirror focus the Sun on skin, paper or cloth; an adult must supervise outdoor tests of the focal length.
Take it further: Use a spoon-sized convex mirror and show that it always gives a small, upright, virtual image.
Rays from an object under water that meet the surface at more than the critical angle are totally reflected and cannot leave. A disc on the surface can hide a pin completely when its radius is large enough, which gives the refractive index.
Safety: An adult must handle the sharp pins and push them through the disc.
Take it further: Use salt water of a known strength and show that the critical angle becomes smaller because n has increased.
Light going from air into glass bends toward the normal so that sin i / sin r is a constant, the refractive index. A graph of sin i against sin r for several angles has a slope equal to that index.
Safety: An adult must supervise the sharp pins and help with any tricky cutting.
Take it further: Repeat with a slab of different thickness and show that the lateral shift is greater for the thicker slab at the same angle.
A ray bent by a prism is deviated by an angle D that first falls and then rises as the angle of incidence increases, with a minimum in the middle. The refractive index follows from the minimum deviation and the prism angle.
Safety: An adult must handle the pins and the glass prism, whose edges can be sharp.
Take it further: Place coloured filters or red and blue paper over the incident ray and measure the minimum deviation for each.
Light passing through a second polarising filter is cut down by cos² of the angle between the two filters’ axes. Measuring the light level against the angle verifies Malus’s law.
Safety: An adult must take apart any old screen and remove the polarising film; handle broken glass with care.
Take it further: Look through one filter at the sky at different angles from the Sun and note where the polarisation is strongest, at 90 degrees from the Sun.
A CD’s closely spaced tracks act as a reflection diffraction grating. A laser pointer makes spots on a wall whose angles give the spacing of the tracks, about 1.6 micrometres, from d sin θ = n λ.
Safety: An adult must supervise. Never shine a laser at anyone’s eyes, or at shiny surfaces that can reflect it back; do not look into the beam or its reflection. Use only a class 2 pointer.
Take it further: Shine the laser across a single human hair stretched on a card and use the fringe spacing to estimate the hair’s thickness.
Before you start
Six things to think about before you decide. A project you understand and finish well beats a big one you rush.
Good projects answer a question you are curious about: why does iron rust, which fabric keeps tea hottest, how does a robot follow a line? A question gives your project a purpose.
Find out whether your teacher wants a working model, a still model or an investigatory project, the size limits, the topic or theme, the date, and whether ready-made models are allowed.
Each idea here shows a class band, a difficulty and a rough time. Choose something you can finish properly with time to test it, rather than something huge you have to rush.
Judges and examiners ask how it works. Choose an idea whose science you understand, or can learn from your textbook and the free ebooks, and practise explaining it.
Write down everything you need before you start. Many models use things from home; motors, LEDs, sensors and boards are easy to buy as spare parts or in a kit.
Change one thing and measure what happens, add a chart of your readings, or show a real-life use. Even a well-known model becomes yours when you add your own observations.
Plan your time
Work backwards from the date of your exhibition or submission. Short of time? Do the same steps faster, but never skip testing.
On the day
You will usually have a minute or two to explain your project, then questions. Practise both out loud at home.
Projects and kits
Need a working model, a kit to build yourself, or a motor, LED, battery or sensor to finish your own? Every idea card links to the matching section of the store.







Cannot find what you need? Ask the head office on WhatsApp.
Free ebooks
Step-by-step project books for every class, plus guides to exhibitions, project files and viva questions. Free to download, read and print.
Science projects
Choose a project, build it, present it and answer the judges with confidence
Science projects
How to write the report, from the cover page to the bibliography
Science projects
How to answer examiner questions, with sample questions for popular projects
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Simple, safe projects young children can make with a little help
Science projects
Working models matched to middle-school science topics
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Topics, method and report structure for physics, chemistry and biology
Stay safe
Read these with a parent before you start. Ideas that need extra care carry their own safety note on the card.
Power your models with cells, batteries or a low-voltage adapter. Never connect anything home-made to a wall socket.
Cutters, blades, glue guns, soldering irons and drills need an adult beside you. Cut away from your body on a board.
Use only safe household materials at home. Acids, stains and other lab chemicals are for the school lab with your teacher. Wear goggles and never taste anything.
Candles and burners only with an adult present and water nearby. Tie back long hair and keep paper away.
Do not short-circuit a battery, mix old and new cells, or puncture or heat a lithium battery. Remove batteries when the model is stored.
Magnets, button cells and small parts can be swallowed. Keep them away from younger brothers and sisters, and wash your hands after making.
Still have a question?
Chat on WhatsAppA working model moves or works to show a principle, such as a windmill that lights an LED. A still model shows how something is built or arranged, such as the layers of the Earth. An investigatory project asks a question and answers it by experiment: you change one thing, measure the result and draw a conclusion from your readings.
Check your school’s rules first: some competitions want models made by the student, and some allow ready-made ones. Either way, you must understand how it works and be able to explain it. A good approach is to build from a kit, or to add your own measurements and chart to a ready-made model.
Each idea here shows a rough time for the making. Leave extra time for reading, testing, the report and practice: three to four weeks from choosing to presenting is comfortable for most school projects.
A title page, your aim, the science behind it, the materials, the method with a diagram, your observations in a table, the result and conclusion, precautions, and the books and websites you used. The free ebook “Writing a Science Project File” explains each part.
Carry spare cells, wires and tape, and test everything when you arrive. Take a short video or photos of it working at home. If something still fails, explain calmly what should happen and what you would check: judges value understanding as much as a perfect model.
More help
Read the student help pages, try the free calculators for circuits and units, or ask the head office on WhatsApp.