CHEMISTRY
http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/
Journal of Chemical Education; search. Pick your experiment. Dyed crystals are nice. Ferrofluids make great demos. Then visit an academic science library and start xeroxing.
PHYSICS
http://www.fourmilab.ch/gravitation/foobar/
Mount a laser pointer on the bar. If the bar twists the spot will move on a distant screen with displacement amplified by distance. If you get clever, can you put a first surface or dielectric mirror on the bar and use the laser pointer to create an optical interferometer? Count fringes.
BIOLOGY
Google
"dna isolation" "science project" 621 hits
"dna isolation kit" "science project" 147 hits
"dna isolation kit" 79,200 hits
Yeast is cheap and available in any supermarket baking stuff aisle. It's colonies are white to brownish.
Serratia marcescens is deep red.
Sarcina lutea is bright yellow.
Chromobacterium violaceum is a lover,
http://cmr.tigr.org/tigr-scripts/CMR...atabase=ntcv01
http://web.umr.edu/~microbio/BIO221_...violaceum.html
http://www.pelletlab.com/living--bacteria.htm
http://www.sargentwelch.com/product....acteria+Set_E_
Pigmented bacteria sets
Grow a batch of colored bacteria. Extract their DNA. Expose damaged growing yeast to the DNA (e.g., remove cell walls, then electroporation, then recovery) and see if you can get mutated colored yeasts.
Or just plate the little fellas (and mixed cultures) and blast with UV (blacklight, UV B, germicidal UV), charting survival and dominance vs. UV dose and color,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract
http://www.epa.gov/wed/pages/publica...ved/tong97.htm
BRUTE FORCE
Gnuplot makes lovely 3-D plots and its free,
http://www.gnuplot.info/
All you need is something to plot. Bicycle pump, pressure gauge, graduated cylinder, empty 1- or 2-liter drink PET bottles, a videocam and vertical calibrated stick, some minor cleverness Vertical axis is maximum height. One axis is milliters filled with fluid. One axis is pressure. What is the response surface? Cf: theory of experimentation. Buy a jug of glycerine (viscous!). At best pressure, how does height vary with liquid viscosity?
DIDDLING
Get a box of cornstarch. Mix a cup of cornstarch with a cup of water being careful to get it smooth and fee of lumpls. Why is that an interesting fluid?
Corn starch, water, cheap speaker, oscillator. Dip a rod, vane, or horizontal disk into varying ratios of cornstach and water. Dipper is connected by a vertical shaft to the speaker. One axis is water/starch ratio, one axis isprobe velocioty (from frequency and length of thrust), one axis is mechanical resistance (be clever, as with phase shift or reactance, or a piezoelectric readout).
----------------
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz4.htm
