Science Fair Projects

This year two of the kids, one in high school and one in middle school, had to submit entries to their school science fairs. We have learned a lot, mainly about what makes for a lousy science fair project.

My daughter's project was relatively straightforward. She obtained two toads from the local pet store as well as a rather nifty toad habitat. The best feature of this habitat is the ability to lift the toads, gravel, props and all out of the surrounding water making the process of changing the water much easier.

In any case, her goal as suggested by one of the science fair websites, was to observe the effect of water temperature on toad respiration rate. First we replaced their room temperature water with somewhat colder water after the introduction of some ice cubes. Then we replaced their water with hot water from the tap (still within a reasonable temperature range as we were not going for toad soup).

The conclusion? Toads would rather you left their environment the heck alone please. In both cases their breathing got faster but it was unclear whether this was a temporary effect due to their scheming what they would do to the experimenters were they the size of a small insect, or a more sustained change, and we did not have the heart to allow them to be uncomfortable long enough to find out! One of the toads even after the water was restored to normal, spent a fairly large amount of time perched on the thermometer whose tip was in the water saying he would some down only with a promise that we would leave them alone!

Then there are the crickets. My son's experiment concerns the effect of environmental pollutants on the chirp rate of crickets. More importantly we discovered another interesting fact. Crickets can detect the presence ofa microphone or stopwatch and in either circumstance they will immediately cease chirping. It is uncanny. A vacuum cleaner, a loud party, heavy metal music (okay maybe not) etc., will not dissuade them from chirping but in an animal demonstration of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle any attempt at measurement shuts them up.

The other problem seemed to come from their incredible sensitivity to pollutants. I believe that it is an extreme manifestation of their unwillingness to chirp that they literally would rather expire.

As part of this experiment we found out what cricket food looks like. It is a blue jelly-like substance. I believe that the makers of cricket food wanted to be absolutely sure that nobody would get an attack of the munchies and reach up and try making a peanut butter and cricket food sandwich, as the food is a semi-fluorescent shade of blue with few parallels except in B science fiction movies. They do seem to enjoy it as it keeps them very talkative if one is trying to do something other than measuring... you know, like sleeping.

The toads have been retired from their scientific duties and now are living a life of ease (by toad standards). In true scientific fashion they spent their professional days as "Toad 1" and "Toad 2". They are now "Huey and "Louie" (please don't ask if we really know their sexes!).

We will triumph over the crickets yet! However I do look forward to science fair projects when the kids have moved on to a safer subject such as physics and we can work on a more controlled experiment such as a home grown nuclear device.