1029 science project ideas, from class 1 to college.

What it shows

The eight planets in order from the Sun, and how much bigger the giant planets are than Earth. Real distances are far too large to show to scale, so say so on your label.

You will need

• Thermocol balls in different sizes
• Poster paints and brushes
• Wire or skewers
• A board or box base
• Labels

What it shows

Warm water evaporates, the vapour condenses into drops on the cold cover, and the drops fall back like rain: the water cycle in miniature.

You will need

• A large glass bowl and a small cup
• Warm water
• Cling film
• Ice cubes in a small bag

Safety: An adult should pour the warm water.

Take it further: Add food colour to the water in the bowl. Is the "rain" that drips into the cup coloured? (It is not: evaporation leaves the colour behind.)

What it shows

Half of the Moon is always lit by the Sun. As the Moon travels round the Earth we see different amounts of that lit half, which gives the phases. They are not caused by the Earth’s shadow.

You will need

• A torch or lamp as the Sun
• A white ball on a stick as the Moon
• A darkened room
• Or a shoe box with eight viewing holes and a ball hung inside

What it shows

Rainfall is measured as the depth of water that would collect on flat ground, in millimetres. A straight-sided container gives a fair reading.

You will need

• A straight-sided clear jar or bottle
• A millimetre scale fixed to the side
• Stones to keep it steady

Take it further: Record the rainfall every day for a month and draw a bar chart.

What it shows

As the Earth turns, the Sun appears to move across the sky and the pointer’s shadow moves with it. For better readings, tilt the pointer towards the north at an angle equal to your latitude (about 28 to 29 degrees in Delhi).

You will need

• A cardboard or wooden base
• A stick or a triangle of card as the pointer
• A protractor and a compass
• A marker

Safety: Never look straight at the Sun.

What it shows

A heavy hanging pen tends to stay still (inertia) while the box and paper shake beneath it, so the pen draws the shaking as a wiggly line.

You will need

• A cardboard box frame
• A pen tied to a weight on a string
• A long paper strip pulled under the pen
• Tape

What it shows

The Earth has a thin rocky crust, a thick hot mantle, a liquid outer core and a solid inner core.

You will need

• A thermocol ball cut to show a quarter section
• Paints or coloured clay
• Labels

What it shows

The Earth’s axis is tilted by about 23.5 degrees. As the Earth goes round the Sun, each half spends part of the year tilted towards the Sun, with stronger and longer sunlight: that is its summer. Seasons are not caused by the Earth’s distance from the Sun.

You will need

• A lamp as the Sun
• A small globe or ball on a tilted stick
• A round board marked with four positions

What it shows

Wind pushes the cups round, and the faster the wind the more turns per minute. The wind vane points into the wind and shows the direction it is blowing from.

You will need

• Four paper cups
• Two straws or sticks fixed in a cross
• A pencil with an eraser, and a pin
• Card for the vane arrow
• A compass to mark the directions

What it shows

Temperature, humidity and pressure sensors take readings every few minutes, and a Wi-Fi board sends them to a web dashboard, building up a record of the local weather.

You will need

• A NodeMCU (ESP8266) or ESP32
• DHT22 and BMP280 sensors
• A rain sensor (optional)
• A ventilated, shaded box for the sensors
• A free cloud dashboard

What it shows

Air pressure changes from day to day. When the outside pressure rises it presses the balloon skin inwards and the straw pointer tips up; when pressure falls before rain, the pointer tips down.

You will need

• A glass jar or wide-mouth bottle
• A balloon with the neck cut off
• A rubber band
• A drinking straw
• A card with a scale drawn on it
• Tape and glue

Safety: An adult should cut the balloon. Keep the jar away from windows and heaters, because warmth also moves the pointer.

Take it further: Compare your readings with the pressure given in a weather app or newspaper for your city.

What it shows

Human hair gets slightly longer when the air is humid and shorter when it is dry. A long hair pulling on a pointer turns this tiny change into a visible movement, which is how real hair hygrometers worked for two centuries.

You will need

• One long human hair, washed with soap to remove oil
• A piece of stiff card or a wooden board
• A light pointer cut from a straw or thin card
• A pin to act as a pivot
• A small weight such as a paper clip
• Tape and a protractor

Safety: The pin point is sharp; press it into the board with an adult watching.

Take it further: Test whether thick hair, thin hair or nylon thread gives the biggest swing.

What it shows

A wind vane turns until its large tail is pushed downwind, so the small arrow head points into the wind. Winds are named by the direction they come from, and the direction often changes before the weather does.

You will need

• A plastic bottle with sand in it as the base
• A pencil with an eraser
• A pin
• A straw
• Stiff card for the arrow head and a larger tail
• A card compass rose marked N, E, S, W
• A magnetic compass or a phone compass app to set north

Safety: An adult should push the pin through the straw into the eraser.

Take it further: Add a small anemometer beside it and record wind speed with direction.

What it shows

Sunlight warms the water, some of it evaporates into vapour, the vapour cools on the plastic and condenses into droplets, and the droplets run down as "rain". The same four stages drive the real water cycle.

You will need

• A clear zip-lock bag
• A quarter cup of water
• A drop of blue food colour
• A permanent marker
• Tape
• A sunny window

Take it further: Tape a second bag on a shaded wall and compare how long the droplets take to appear.

What it shows

Clouds form when moist air expands and cools, and water vapour condenses on tiny particles. Squeezing the bottle warms and clears the air; letting go expands and cools it so a cloud appears, but only when smoke particles are present to condense on.

You will need

• A clear 1 litre plastic bottle with cap
• A little warm water, not boiling
• An incense stick or a matchstick for a wisp of smoke
• A dark background to see the cloud

Safety: An adult must light and blow out the incense stick. The water should be warm to the touch only, never hot enough to soften the bottle.

Take it further: Measure the temperature of the water each time and find the warmest water that still gives a clear cloud.

What it shows

The dew point is the temperature at which air becomes saturated and water starts to condense. Cooling a shiny can slowly until it mists over gives the dew point, and from dew point and air temperature the relative humidity can be read from a table.

You will need

• A clean shiny steel or aluminium can
• A thermometer that reads to 1 degree or better
• Ice cubes and water
• A stirring rod
• A relative humidity table printed from a textbook
• A notebook

Safety: Handle the thermometer gently; a digital probe is safer than glass.

Take it further: Build a wet-and-dry bulb hygrometer from two thermometers and compare its humidity values with the dew point method.

What it shows

A composite volcano is built from alternating layers of hardened lava and ash. Magma rises from a chamber deep below through a central pipe and sometimes side vents, and the cut-away shows how the inside connects to the crater at the top.

You will need

• A thermocol or cardboard base
• Newspaper and flour-and-water paste, or clay
• Red, orange, grey and brown paint
• A straw or pipe for the central vent
• Labels on toothpicks

Safety: An adult should cut thermocol with a blade. Flour paste should be used fresh and dried well so it does not grow mould.

Take it further: Build a second, low and wide shield volcano beside it and compare the two shapes.

What it shows

Runny lava spreads far and builds wide, low shield volcanoes; thick, sticky lava piles up near the vent and builds steep cones. Pouring liquids of different viscosity through a hole in a tray shows the two shapes forming.

You will need

• A flat tray or a sheet of plastic on a table
• A paper cup with a small hole in the bottom
• Water with a drop of colour
• Cooking oil
• Honey or thick sugar syrup
• A ruler and a stopwatch

Safety: Wipe spills at once; oil and syrup on the floor are slippery.

Take it further: Warm the honey in a bowl of hot water and repeat to show how temperature changes viscosity and flow.

What it shows

Earthquake waves shake the ground sideways. A simple shake table shows that wide-based, cross-braced and lighter-topped buildings stay up longer than tall, narrow, top-heavy ones, which is why real buildings in earthquake zones use bracing and a low centre of mass.

You will need

• Two flat boards or thick cardboard sheets
• Four rubber balls or marbles between the boards
• Four rubber bands to hold the top board loosely
• Ice-cream sticks, straws and glue or tape for towers
• Small clay lumps as weights
• A stopwatch

Safety: An adult should help with a glue gun if one is used.

Take it further: Change the rhythm of shaking and find the speed at which each tower swings most; that is its resonant frequency.

What it shows

The Earth's crust is broken into plates that float on the soft upper mantle. Pushing two biscuits apart, together, or sideways shows how ridges, mountains and faults form at the three kinds of plate boundary.

You will need

• Four plain rectangular biscuits
• A thick layer of jam or wet flour paste on a plate
• A glass of water
• A sheet of paper for sketches
• A marker

Safety: Wash hands before and after; the biscuits are not to be eaten after handling.

Take it further: Push one biscuit under the other to model subduction, and discuss why deep ocean trenches form there.

What it shows

Crayon shavings pressed together act like sediment turning into sedimentary rock, pressed and warmed they become metamorphic rock, and melted and cooled they become igneous rock. The same changes, with real heat and pressure over millions of years, make up the rock cycle.

You will need

• Three old wax crayons of different colours
• A pencil sharpener or a plastic knife for shaving
• Aluminium foil folded into small cups
• A bowl of hot water from a kettle
• A heavy book
• Paper towels

Safety: An adult must pour the hot water and handle the foil cup while it floats. Do not use a flame or a microwave for the wax.

Take it further: Repeat with sugar instead of wax under adult supervision and compare how the crystals look after cooling.

What it shows

A harder material scratches a softer one. Using a fingernail, a copper coin, a steel nail and a piece of glass as reference points, any rock or mineral can be placed on the Mohs hardness scale from 1 to 10.

You will need

• Rocks and minerals collected locally: chalk, brick, granite, marble chips, quartz pebbles, slate
• A copper coin or a thick copper wire
• A steel nail
• A piece of glass with taped edges
• A hand lens
• A notebook and labels

Safety: Tape the glass edges and let an adult hold it while testing. Wear old clothes; rock dust stains.

Take it further: Test a streak colour by rubbing each sample on an unglazed tile and add a streak column to the table.

What it shows

Soil is a mixture of sand, silt and clay particles of different sizes. Shaken in water, the heavy sand sinks in a minute, silt in a few hours and clay over days, so the layers in the jar show the soil's texture.

You will need

• Two or three clear jars with lids
• Soil samples from a garden, a field and a roadside
• Water
• A pinch of salt or a spoon of detergent to help clay separate
• A ruler
• A soil texture triangle from a textbook

Safety: Wash hands after handling soil.

Take it further: Grow seeds in each soil type and compare growth after two weeks.

What it shows

Water passes through soils at very different rates. Sand lets water through in seconds, clay holds it for a long time, and the result decides where groundwater forms, where floods happen and which crops grow.

You will need

• Four funnels made from cut bottle tops
• A piece of cotton cloth for each funnel
• Equal volumes of sand, garden soil, clay soil and gravel
• Four measuring cups or marked glasses
• A stopwatch
• A jug of water

Safety: An adult should cut the bottles; tape the cut edges.

Take it further: Mix sand and clay in different ratios and find the mix that drains at a medium rate.