As this site develops over time, just click on a topic of interest, and it will take you to a separate post about that specific topic. You will find background information, relevant links to articles, vocabulary, experimental methods, videos, and so on. Hopefully you will find enough information to actually be able to do the project!
Experimental Topics & Research Questions: Life & Environmental Sciences
A vast array of research possibilities comes about through the use of drone and digital video technologies. With reliable drones with high-definition cameras can now be found for under $500, more schools and individuals can begin to afford them and can take on studies of local ecosystems. Note that there are numerous chemical testing sets for lakes/streams/rivers/ponds, and soil, for under $100. Just do a Google search for "chemical analysis kits for water (or soil)" and you should get numerous options from a variety of supply companies. Students can do studies in shorter-term periods, and teachers can set up long-term research studies with individual student researchers or their classes over a period of years, studying the temporal changes of an ecosystem and trying to figure out why changes (or stability) occur.
- An interesting idea is to get samples of different species of plants and animals in different ecosystems, and do a comparative study of size. There have been studies like this, but there are countless species and variants that have almost certainly not been studied like this before. If there is some way of doing this where you live, and then getting some samples and measurements from a different setting (e.g. if you live in a rural area, look at a certain type of ant or spider, or type of weed or flower, and compare sizes of those to the same species living in an urban and/or suburban area...how do they compare?). If you cannot get to other areas, this would be a wonderful way of setting up a collaborative experimental study with a school in the other area! Previous studies suggest invertebrates in cities are smaller than in the country. Remember, an important part of science is independent verification and reproducibility, so if you are interested in something, and find there have been some initial studies, it is still worthwhile to do your project.
- Anything related to mushrooms and other fungi. Fungi help break down anything that is naturally built from hydrocarbons, and the 'root' networks literally everywhere in the world, which is called mycelium for mushrooms, form the largest living networks on the planet. The mycelium, which consist of trillions of webs and interconnections in just a cubic meter of soil in a forest, is a neural network similar in structure to our brain's network of neurons. Trees use mycelium as part of their underground communications networks (yes, trees and plants 'talk' to each other through their root systems!). There are over one-million species of fungi, so do experiments that explore the growth and uses/applications of fungi/mushrooms! This can also lead to finding the most efficient and productive ways of growing edible mushrooms as food sources in the home, for very little cost, that low income households and food deserts can use. All sorts of ideas for this amazing kingdom!
- Use of drones to study local areas of interest. Could include population studies of different types of animals, land coverage of different local plant species. Interesting studies could include doing this before and after a nearby construction project, and how that affects adjacent ecosystems. This could evolve into longer-term class/program studies, where students do the same counts year after year to measure any changes that occur. Drones have come down drastically in price, and could lead to all sorts of creative, novel studies like the ones mentioned! Be creative, think local - chances are a study you have in mind has not been done before, especially in rural settings. Check with your local town hall for records of what has and has not been done, do something original!
- A little more computational type work: find databases that go back some number of decades, and find out what the trends are over time for some environmental phenomenon. For example, have the average number of forest fires around the world been changing over time? One could use data to find percent increase/decrease for regions of the world, as well as total numbers globally. It could be simply numbers of fires, or acreage burned, etc., depending what data are available. These trends could be plotted and best-fit functions (functions of time) determined to provide mathematical models. Color-coded maps could be generated for a visual of regions of percentage increase or decrease over some time period. One could consider fires, storms, flooding, anything crop related, deforestation, bee or other insect/animal/plant species populations, rainfall, temperature, and anything else you can think of that has databases available.
- Local studies of irrigation or crop fields, nurseries, nature preserves, and any other ecosystem using the drone and other field studies. How do these change after storms or after snow melt? Chances are studies of your local area have not been done on those fields, making your work an original project!
- Are there natural structures or organisms we can mimic or learn from that will help collect and channel water for people to use? Think in terms of collecting water overnight through condensation of moisture in the air. This is part biology, physics, and engineering, but I bet high school students who put their minds to this can think of something clever and cost-effective for poor regions of the world, where water can already be quite scarce.
- Included in the drone studies could be ongoing chemical analyses of soil and/or any water sources within the defined ecosystem. Could also include biological studies of soil and water sources, for example doing counts of different insects and other organisms within the sample, including microscopic studies. Do these measurements change over time? If so, what is driving the changes? Teachers could develop a robust, long-term research program around this type of work, either with classes or through individual students taking it on as a research project.
- Climate change modeling. This is simulation based, but worth mentioning on the experimental page since there is a climate model available to student use.
Biophysics
- Effects of magnetism on microorganisms; do local organisms in ponds/lakes/streams, or in soil samples, respond at all to magnetic fields? Are rates of population growth, cell multiplication affected? Use of electromagnets, such as Helmholtz coils, can be used, with both DC and AC currents and magnetic fields.
- Effects of magnetism on plants: is plant growth, development affected at all by magnetic fields? One can place various local plants in magnetic fields from when a seed placed in soil sample to full growth of the plant. On average, are any features of the development of the plant affected by magnetism?
- Scaling laws in biology. For examples, go here.
- Learn from natural systems (biomimetics). Can you be creative and innovative, and construct devices or experiments based on features of living organisms? This could include engineering challenges. Here is an example of an engineer who studies how jellyfish propel through water, in order to improve propulsion systems of humanmade vehicles in aerospace engineering.
- One example of possible biomimetics studies can be the skins of plants such as onions. One could try to test the strengths, and compare strength to cellular structure and patterns. This is a mix of biophysics and mechanical engineering.
- Any longer-term effects on organisms from low-energy (nonionizing) radiation. If you have access to an electromagnetic frequency generator, there could be a number of interesting experiments in the lab. This could include WiFi routers. Or there could be field studies of vegetation or bacteria in soil or water sources near and away from power lines, cell towers, radio transmission towers, or other - are there any distribution patterns you observe as a function of location from the source? Are there any effects on growth rates, reproductive rates of different organisms?
- Biomechanics: what are the physical structures that allow any type of organism to move? For example, insects and small animals are too small for muscles, and have evolved springs in their legs. How do ratios between body or plant parts change through various stages of growth? What are the methods used for leverage, and what are the mechanical advantages and efficiencies for the different ways of moving? There are endless numbers of animals, plants and microorganisms that can be considered and studied, in numerous ways...be creative!
- An interesting biophysics type of question can be related back to a project where the question of what shaped egg is least likely to roll out of mountainside nests is asked. Scientists 3D printed different shaped eggs to test this. One could ask similar questions for any number of species of birds or other egg-laying animals. It would be really interesting if one could find, in the lab, shapes that are best-suited for a particular type of nest and its environment, and then compare to the actual eggs that were the result of natural selection.
- Bioacoustics: try to identify patterns in sounds ('speech') of any type of local animal under different conditions - Is there a type of 'speech' that emerges? Under what conditions? Is it random noises? Are the same sounds made consistently under the same conditions or stimuli? Or, how do organisms respond to different sounds, frequencies? All sorts of possibilities that can be done in the field or in a lab (which could be your home) - just need some basic AV equipment (such as a cell phone) and patience and observational skills. There is a free, open-source software package called Sound Analysis Pro, which has one feature being specific to animal communication.
- Epigenetics: Environmental factors can affect the ways genes work, without any actual physical changes to the DNA. For a high school student, this could be a metastudy of the literature. What are the implications of high stress and traumatic experiences to children and teens? How long an exposure to different environments can cause measurable changes in one's phenotype? Is this a function of age? What does this mean in terms of school environments - remember that children are in school, timewise, longer than any other consistent environment other than one's home environment. Are the gene expressions of adults in high-stress environments and circumstances actually passed on to their children? While this may not be something that can be physically researched within a high school, researching the existing literature is something students can do to try and make sense of this process in terms of local conditions.
General info. http://www.affs.org/html/biomagnetism.html
Links: http://www.berlin.ptb.de/8/82/821/821e.html
Biology
Biology
- Plant studies as a function of temperature. With climate change, what plants are best suited to survive and thrive in warmer environments? How does plant growth in general depend on temperature? Is photosynthesis affected by temperature? This type of study can include things like root depth, leaf size, coloration, growth rates. For crop plants, the size, output quantities, and growth rates of the food as functions of temperature. These types of experiments can be done just about anywhere. These types of studies, and finding food plants that can adapt to changing climate, is vitally important, especially when considering the combination of climate change with population growth.
- If one has access to a greenhouse, and can control and sustain environmental conditions, one may be able to study the effect of warmer average temps, dryness/moisture, soil conditions, and other factors and use climate model predictions to test how current plants respond, as well as what plants or crops do well in those environments. One could do studies of what the vegetation of the future might look like in the coming decades.
- Chemical tests of water and/or soil purity, other properties of water/soil; could do these types of studies over time, and show longitudinal trends in a local environment
- Epigenetics in plants: By introducing various stresses on different species of plants, can the gene expressions of the plant and its response to the stress be passed down through cell division?
- Animal behavior (field work); could create your own using aquaria, small pools
- There are many aspects of Ecology and Animal Behavior that rely on mathematical models to describe the function of systems, e.g. Optimal Foraging Theory, Evolutionarily Stable Strategies, polymorphisms, Ideal Free Distribution and many others.
- Phytoremediation studies (use of plants to absorb pollutants from soil, etc.)
- The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) is part of the human genome project, and has databases open to the public. Site is https://www.encodeproject.org/
Computational Chemistry
This would require more sophisticated software, which would likely use density functional theory (DST). There is open-source software for this, such as OpenMX. The idea behind this is to design molecules and computationally determine/predict what the properties should be. Or take various chemicals and predict what the reactions will be (effectively computer experiments, to determine what the chemistry should be without having to do all the physical experiments). Physical experiments would need to be done to check the predictions - but what this does is allow one to try a series of 'what if' tests to see if anything interesting comes from it, before having to spend all the money and time with wet chemistry to test it. Engineers use this to look for interesting applications before spending money and time to do trial-and-error searches.
This would require more sophisticated software, which would likely use density functional theory (DST). There is open-source software for this, such as OpenMX. The idea behind this is to design molecules and computationally determine/predict what the properties should be. Or take various chemicals and predict what the reactions will be (effectively computer experiments, to determine what the chemistry should be without having to do all the physical experiments). Physical experiments would need to be done to check the predictions - but what this does is allow one to try a series of 'what if' tests to see if anything interesting comes from it, before having to spend all the money and time with wet chemistry to test it. Engineers use this to look for interesting applications before spending money and time to do trial-and-error searches.
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