For Biologists - The 'Tree of Life' interactive site

If you have not seen this and are interested in biology, check out an interactive site where you can zoom in on any branch of the 'tree of life' to find out information on just about any organism you want. It is a fascinating site of which you should be aware, whether it helps with research or not.

Congratulations to all seniors who submitted to the Regeneron STS!!

Last week, likely some 1500+ seniors around the country, who have been working on research projects over long periods of time, submitted applications and papers describing their research to the Regeneron Science Talent Search (STS). Congratulations to all of them!

The STS is the 'Nobel Prize for High Schools,' where ultimately one student will take home a $250,000 top prize. This will occur after 300 national semifinalists are selected, and then 40 national finalists from that group. The goal of this contest is find the most promising scientific talent in the nation - thirteen finalists in the STS have gone on to win the actual Nobel!

One may think they must be working on cancer cures in order to win, but students can work in anything and be eligible. It is quite an accomplishment to write up one's work and defend it, which is all part of the science process. Congratulations to those seniors who took on this challenge!

If interested in writing up your work - examples of student papers

For those students who take on science research, a key part of the process is to write up results and share with the science community by publishing your work. For high school students, this is entirely possible and should be seriously considered. But there is an issue with technical science writing - most high school students, and many teachers for that matter, do not have extensive, if any, real experience with technical writing along the lines of what a professional would publish in a journal.

Check out good examples of student papers, almost all of which were submitted to science contest at the state or national level (and almost all had some sort of state or national recognition). It is good practice to use others' work as models and guides to understand the style and formatting for this type of writing, especially if you have an interest in submitting to a local science fair or a state or national contest.

Teachers and Students: Try to Publish your basement science work as a class lab!

I want to encourage teachers and students to, when appropriate, publish articles in professional journals as co-authors for some of your 'basement science' research projects. If you have a project that really does use simple, affordable equipment, and it is effective in getting measured or observed results, share it with the broader high school education community. For example, in physics the leading professional journal for high schools is The Physics Teacher (TPT), published from the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). For high school science, The Science Teacher (TST) is the leading general journal put out by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). I'm sure there are other teacher journals out there in other disciplines. The point is, these professional organizations have publications that go out to thousands and tens of thousands of members on a monthly basis, and they are looking to publish creative, doable activities that many other teachers and students may be interested in. These organizations also put on multiple national and regional conferences every year, and those are a chance to share your results and work so others may use it or some variation of what you've done.

Some examples of research project work I have published in TPT and TST are with hydraulic jump, Faraday waves on vibrated droplets, temperature dependence of kinetic friction, and a mechanical system that behaves in a counterintuitive way. Three of these papers were co-written with students, and all were presented in a way that could be used as a classroom lab or inquiry activity, as well as modified to make new, novel research projects. Other students who had professor mentors have published in various journals, as well. Note that it is a rarity for high school students to be published in peer reviewed journals while still in high school. The exposure to your work is much greater than just posting on social media, where thousands of colleagues have access to it rather than perhaps a few dozen who follow you (unless you happen to have thousands of other teachers following you, but that is a rarity).

Publishing with students is great fun because it allows them to actually go through the entire research project, build their professional resume, and learn about the vital role of publication in science. Also, they see firsthand the process of publication, and how one may need to have a back and forth with the editor and anonymous reviewers, over many months time periods, before it is worthy of publication. Give it a try and have fun with it!

Inspirational - Some Professional Scientists who work in areas with little or no resources

There is an article in Nature with interviews with five scientists who work in poor regions of Africa, and who have little or no resources for their research. But, they find a way to do things for the societal good, and this is what we are after on this site!

Be inspired!!

2016 Google Science Fair Grand Prize given for a 'basement science' project!

Use this as inspiration, and this story reflects the whole purpose of this web site:

Teenager Kiara Nirghin of South Africa won the 2016 Google Science Fair top prize for her work in trying to solve a local problem. South Africa was in the midst of a severe drought, and a majority of its people were beginning to feel pressure with food insecurity since crops were dying. Kiara was determined to help solve this problem by inventing a homemade chemical using orange and avocado peels that can hold 300 times its weight in water. By planting this mixture next to growing plants, the plants did significantly better and could survive much longer in the drought conditions.

This is an amazing example of the type of science and discovery one can do without funding, professional labs, and in one's basement!!

It takes identifying something of interest, breaking it down into fundamental pieces - think about what quantities and parameters might affect whatever it is you are interested in - and then create experiments to test how any of those parameters affects the system. Often one can find a local problem that requires a unique and new solution, and teens are fully capable of figuring such problems out!!

Just try it if you are curious about something!! You're likely to amaze yourself!

Citizen Science - A chance for anyone to be involved

Citizen science has become a type of research that has exploded in the past few decade. Because some areas of research are so vast, and have enormous numbers of measurements or data points that need to be looked at, or cover huge areas of physical space, there is no good way for an individual or small team of researchers to make the necessary observations or analyze the 'big data' sets that are collected. The solution - call the calvary! That is, make a bigger research team by getting volunteers, who are non-scientists and non-experts in the field, but who can help get through the data or make additional observations that otherwise would not be possible!

Keep in mind, these projects may give you some spin-off ideas for an individual project you can try, especially those that involve field work. Use these to find inspiration and trigger your own imagination!

Check out Zooniverse to see dozens of research projects that need help from someone just like you! National Geographic has numerous projects. There are many more, too, as listed on this Wikipedia page.

Engineering/Innovation Idea - "Touch-screen" Walls

For those who have students more into the 'E' of STEM, which is Engineering, here is a project idea they may want to try. In the July, 2018, Scientific American is an article explaining how to change a wall into effectively a touchscreen surface. This can be done for about $200, and could be a good challenge for students. In addition, they can try to rig up a circuit board that can be read out by a computer and try to produce images of objects in the room that can be picked up by the wall.

If this is done successfully, one can begin to have students think of clever applications of the wall. Keep in mind these definitions (my favorites are from creativity guru Sir Ken Robinson, in his book "Out of Our Minds"):
Imagination: process of bringing to mind things that are not present to our senses;
Creativity: process of developing original ideas that have value;
Innovation: process of putting new ideas into practice.

Let students innovate with the wall, and see where it takes them. While this is not necessarily research for new discoveries, this is the type of project that will allow students to become engineers, who take existing science and figure out ways of using it to solve real-world, practical problems. For instance, what if a store had such a wall - what are some ways it could be used by the store employees? Or in a home? In a police station? What about uses of this sort of wall in outdoor settings? Could be a lot of fun trying this!

NASA announces PubSpace site

NASA just made it easy to find and have access to any peer-reviewed, published research article from any group that had any level of NASA funding. This is called NASA PubSpace, which is housed at PubMed Central (PMC). You can browse all NASA funded papers in PMC, or you can access and search for all PMC articles. Note there are over 4.9 million articles you can access in PMC for the life and medical sciences! WOW!! 

A Possible Research Pathway: Biomechanics studies of just about any critter!

So, if you have taken a physics class, there is a good chance you've come across learning something about springs and elastic forces. It is the right question to ask when we cover something like springs in class: Why should we care? Besides being able to solve some physics problems, what's the point?

A cool application has to do with the size of organisms. Small critters like insects are too small to have muscles the way we do. Instead, they've evolved effectively springs in their legs, which are more linear than muscles, which are multidimensional and, therefore, take up too much space for their body to fit or support. Awesome!

Keep in mind that biomechanical studies are something we can try to do in our research program! One can study any local organisms, from how and why they move the way they do (locomotion), mechanical advantages and efficiencies and relative strengths when they move other objects, ratios of various body parts and why those ratios, and not others, evolved. One may think of this as an engineer would, or from the point of view of finding the basic mechanical and dynamic principles as a pure scientist would ask. Consider using video techniques as the main source of data and observations.

Keep in mind these types of research questions can be applied to any organism of any size, and not just animals or microorganisms...one can ask interesting questions about any type and size plant. What are the relative sizes of arteries in the plants structure compared to the height and other dimensions of the plant, or to the size of its leaves. Be creative and let your mind develop a wide range of possible questions that can be explored!

It may be possible to develop or find some software to design your own organism to see how it might fare in some ecosystem. Think computational biomechanics!

In all cases, one may consider something like ratios and proportions of various body or plant parts over the growth stages of the organism. Do various ratios stay constant through growth, or are there different ratios at different stages of growth? Again, be observant and be creative in the questions you ask and pursue. 

Single-drop Experimentation

While never having a student of mine pick up experiments using single drops of water, outside of looking at Faraday waves on oscillating droplets of water (on a rigid, vibrating surface), we can imagine numerous possible experimental studies. There are classic videos of a single drop falling into a plate of water, and so on. But think of a variety of different ways of looking at a single drop of water; or it could be any liquid, and do comparison studies. With enough variety and creativity, there is a good chance what you end up looking at is not something that has been studied in depth.

Experimentally, video is best way to view whatever system you choose. Be sure to have some measured distance scale in the video or picture. You will also want to know the diameter and volume of the water droplets, as well as the height from which a drop or anything else falls - you will want some measure of the impact speed based on the height and effects of air friction.

• Notice individual drops of water on car windows after or during rain falling. What determines the size of drops that are able to remain stationary on the window? One could do experiments where different sized water drops (using pipettes to measure the volume of water in the drop) are placed on a glass surface, which is then tilted are a variety of angles. What effect does the angular tilt have on the size of droplets that are able to remain stationary? Does the surface temperature have any effect? When drops finally succumb to gravity and flows down the surface, are there any patterns that consistently appear? Add wind - use a fan or hair dryer, and what effect does this have? Use surfaces of differing materials, to see what role surface plays on the behavior of drops. 
• if you have any high-speed camera capabilities, what do single drops look like when they fall and hit hard surfaces? What are the splash patterns of single droplets of differing sizes/volumes? Does temperature make a difference? Does surface material make a difference? Is there any momentary flow of the water from the droplet along the surface before splashing happens? Does it make any difference if the surface is tilted through some range of angles? What happens if there is a single grain of sand or other material at the location of where the drop lands? What if there are small divots/craters on the surface where the drops land? Can you suppress the splash of single drops  by using different materials/topologies of the surfaces? 
• For drops of water sitting on a surface, what happens if a single grain of sand falls into the drop? Is there splashing? Are there 'ripples' or waves on the surface of the drop due to the impact of a grain of sand? What about using drops of other liquids? Grains of materials other than sand? 
• For any of the above experiments, what if the surface vibrates or moves in any way? 

Be creative, and keep thinking of variations on a theme, and make your experiments something new! 

Method for seeing and filming air flow: Schlieren Imaging

Here is a wonderful imaging process that can be done in the spirit of basement science. It is called Schlieren imaging, and it makes use of a convex or parabolic mirror, a point light source, and a camera with a telephoto lens.

Keep in mind that if you want to visualize the flow of water, make use of rheoscopic fluid.

The Power of Photography for natural event observation and measurement

In the most amazing use of photographic techniques I have seen to date, the 2012 documentary "Chasing Ice," currently available on Netflix, shows how James Balog has captured video evidence of climate change. He and his team set up a few dozen cameras in Alaska, Iceland, Greenland and Montana, to photograph what ice sheets and glaciers did over about three year periods. Hundreds of thousands of photos were taking by these cameras, and the team put together time-lapse movies. Simply staggering results, as we can all literally watch climate change in action over long periods of time (well, three years is long to most humans...but a fraction of a second to geological time).

While what Mr. Balog did is beyond what we can do in high schools, the techniques used might provide some of us with more ideas for research. Now that iPhones and commercial cameras that have come down in price to a couple hundreds of dollars have higher resolution capabilities, time lapse, panorama and slow motion features, high school students and teachers have some means of using this as a primary tool for research in just about any area of study. And with free online video analysis software such as Tracker, one can make time, distance, and angular measurements directly from video frames, so long as one captures objects of known size in the video in order to calibrate the measurements.

Be creative, and think about studying phenomena using video. Get time evolution profiles, size scales and how those change in your system. One can study any everyday dynamical system now, while in high school, with small budgets. On this CABS platform, most of the project options can use video measurements as the main source of data, and one can carry a portion of his or her lab in their pocket or purse - your cell phone or a small camera.

Note that our reach has extended now that cameras can be placed on drones, which are also coming down in price!

Use Balog's work, such as his TED Talk, as inspiration of what is possible, and just be observant of your local environment and find something interesting to investigate!

After 19 years, Siemens Science Competition ending

The 2017 Siemens Science Competition was the last, as the Siemens Foundation has decided to use its financial resources for STEM in different ways. This competition was one of the biggest STEM challenges for high school students, alongside the Regeneron Science Talent Search.  In my opinion, the biggest loss from this is it was the only major science competition that allowed team submissions. From now on, it will be only contests for individual students, which in some ways is a shame since science research is typically such a collaborative process and experience. Perhaps other competitions will make modifications to accompany partner/team efforts - time will tell.

Example of a Vibrating Granular Experiment

This is a good example of a vibrating granular material experiment. When granulars are vibrated vertically, there are combinations of frequency and amplitude that lead to interesting patterns. There are many ways to tweak these experiments and look for new patterns and results!