Science Fair Title Ideas

A science fair is your time to break free from textbooks and tests and build your knowledge from hands-on experience. It's also a chance to try your hand at a real career in science, as you'll be held to the same standards as the professionals. A science fair project must adhere to the core components of a well-designed experiment, and that starts with understanding the scientific method. It all begins with a question, followed by a hypothesis, experimentation, data analysis, and ultimately, a conclusion that resolves the original quandary.

For a truly great science fair project, you should start with a question you're actually curious about. It could come from your favorite subjects and activities, or from a problem in the world that you're passionate about solving. You'll be surprised how many topics can be spun into experiments that use the scientific method. Often, the best science fair titles are simply the question itself, a prompt to get your audience wondering and invested in your results. Picking a great starting query out of the whole vast world of science can feel overwhelming, so it's best to break things down by individual fields of study.

Health and biology are great fields to focus on for a science fair project because they are so evidently impactful in all of our daily lives. Studying plants and animals can enrich our relationship with nature, and experiments centered around fitness and illness can even influence your audience to live a healthier life.

Investigate the question, which school surface has the most bacteria? Use a cotton swab to collect samples from commonly-touched surfaces at your school like faucet handles, door knobs, and desktops. Use a bacterial testing kit to find out which surface is the most contaminated.

Determine how your nose affects taste perception by performing a set of taste tests. Compare the flavor of different foods, tasting them once with your nose pinched shut, and once like normal. Observe whether certain flavors are more affected by your nose than others.

Measure the effects of musical genres on heart rate using a heart monitor. Compare your heart rate while listening to a series of different musical genres. Try to predict which musical genres might make your heart rate speed up and which might make it slow down. Repeat this test on friends and family to see if the results are consistent.

Conduct a series of experiments to determine how light affects mold growth. Take samples of a food that easily grows mold, such as fruit or bread, and place each sample under a different type of light bulb. Potential options include UV light, fluorescent light, infrared light, and LED light.

Chemistry is real life magic, transforming matter through reactions on a level we cannot even see. Eye-catching chemical reactions can produce some of the most exciting science fair displays and make you feel like a wizard in the process.

You can grow crystals from various types of salts, including table salt (sodium chloride), epsom salt (magnesium sulfate), alum (hydrated potassium aluminum sulfate), and borax (sodium borate). Create a science far project centered on the question of which salt grows the largest crystals. Try using all of the salts just mentioned here, and compare the size and quantity of crystals produced by each.

Candles can be made from many different types of wax, such as paraffin, beeswax, soy wax, palm wax, and even synthetic wax, but which type of candle wax burns the longest? Take candles made from different wax varieties and compare how long each of them burns. Make sure all the candles have a consistent size and shape to prevent those factors from skewing your results.

Which brand of antacid is the best at neutralizing stomach acid? You can simulate the action inside your stomach by dropping various types of antacids into cups of vinegar. Use universal pH indicator strips to compare the acidity of the vinegar before and after.

Biodegradable plastic, also known as bioplastic, illustrates how a knowledge of chemistry can help cut down pollution. You can make bioplastic at home using readily-accessible materials like cornstarch, gelatin, agar agar, and glycerin. Think of ways to test the strength of your homemade bioplastic against commercial plastic.

Physics covers a wide array of subjects, dealing in the makeup of matter and all the forces that power the universe. Physics projects are great for those who enjoy visual and tactile learning. 

Determine which materials are the best conductors of electricity by building a simple electrical circuit using a battery pack and wires. Then, place a series of different materials between the electrodes and see which ones can successfully complete the circuit. Try using a variety of materials. You could focus just on different types of metal, or test nonmetals and even liquids.

For a real showstopper of a project, teach your audience how to see music. Yes, you can literally see music by visualizing sound waves. To do this, pour some sand or liquid into a dish and place a speaker beneath the plate. Play sounds of different pitches and frequencies and record how the sand or liquid you've chosen vibrates.

Fold a series of paper airplanes, following a different design for each. Try varying the length, width, wing size, and wing angle. Make a prediction about which design will fly the farthest, then test your hypothesis by flying each plane and measuring the distance they cover.

Cosmic rays are invisible to the naked eye, but you can visualize them by creating a homemade cloud chamber. By trapping evaporated alcohol in an airtight chamber, you can create a cloud of mist. Particles passing through the air will leave visible tracks in the cloud that you can observe and photograph.

The mysterious nature of the universe makes astronomy one of the most popular scientific subjects, and a reliable hit amongst science fair audiences. These experiments can tap into the innate drama of the cosmos.

Create a visual model of the spacetime continuum by taking a piece of a flexible film such as spandex or plastic wrap and stretching it across a ring to create a sort of trampoline. Then, place balls of various weights, representing different celestial bodies, onto the film and observe how they bend the material.

What would you hear if you were floating in the vacuum of space? You can simulate this by creating a vacuum within a sealed container. Have a sound-emitting device such as a buzzer or small speaker in the container, and record the volume and quality of the sound using a microphone.

Simulate asteroid impacts by filling a container with flour and dropping objects of varying sizes and shapes into it. Make predictions about how the size and shape of each projectile will affect the resulting crater, then put them to the test.

How accurately can you measure the size of the sun without using any scientific equipment? You can calculate the size of the sun by creating a simple pinhole projector and using geometry to scale up your measurements. Do this and compare your results to official measurements of the sun to determine how reliable the pinhole method is.

The biggest scientific story of our time is the long and short term effects of global warming and the many disasters caused by climate change. Environmental science is a great field to focus on if you are passionate about this issue and hope to find solutions for a better world going forward.

Investigate the effects of soil pH on plant growth. You can change the pH of potting soil by either adding an acidic substance like aluminum sulfate (this will lower the pH), or an alkaline substance like garden lime (this will raise the pH). Try growing the same type of plant in acidic, alkaline, and neutral soil, and observe which does the best.

Get a home microplastic testing kit and take samples of water from various local sources. Compare tap water, bottled water, and natural water sources like rivers, lakes, and ponds if you have access to them.

Test whether plants can be saved from acid rain by alkaline substances like limestone. You can make simulated acid rain by mixing distilled water with an acid like vinegar or sulfuric acid, then using it to water plants. Mix limestone into the soil of one of the plants and see if it grows differently under acid rain conditions than a plant in plain soil.

Measure the effect of deforestation on temperature. Record ground and air temperatures in a forested area and an open area with no trees. Make a hypothesis about whether you expect the temperatures to differ and how before putting it to the test.

Food science is a great field to focus on because it hits close to home for everyone. These science fair projects will not only demonstrate important concepts of chemistry, but could also inspire your audience to make smarter and healthier decisions in the kitchen.

Buy an assortment of fruits and make a prediction about which type of fruit you expect will have the highest glucose level. Then, juice each of the fruits and dip glucose testing strips into them to see if your hypothesis holds up.

Test how impactful the appearance of food can be by taste testing the same items dyed different colors. This is most easily done by adding food coloring to cups of juice. Enlist a friend or family member to do a taste test and see if the changes in color alter their perception of flavor.

There are lots of different methods for tenderizing meat, including acidic marinades, commercial meat tenderizers, or simply beating it with a mallet, but which method makes for the best meal? Learn about the muscle structure of your meat of choice and use that to make a prediction about which tenderizing method will be best.

We all know that spicy foods have an impact on your tongue, but what about the rest of your body? Compare factors like heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature before and after eating a spicy dish.

If you love to get busy with your hands and build things, an engineering project would be the perfect choice for a science fair. You can even link the practical applications of your creations to other fields of science, like health and environmentalism.

Compare the tensile strength of different adhesives to determine which kind is the best choice for building. Don't just test different brands; test different categories of adhesives like epoxy glue, wood glue, contact cement, and hot glue.

Compare the effectiveness of different water filtration methods. There are quite a number of natural materials that can be used for water filtration. Try passing water through various filtration materials and check the results by using a water quality testing kit. These can test for a variety of qualities including pH, water hardness, and mineral content.

Find out which means of insulation is the best by lining a set of sealable containers with different insulating materials. These could include styrofoam, aluminum foil, mineral wool, and polyurethane foam. Place a cup of hot water in each container and record which retains heat the longest.

Maglev (magnetic levitation) trains use repelling magnets on both the track and the train carriage to create a vehicle that levitates. You can build a model of a maglev train and track using wood or building blocks paired with simple magnets. For an extra challenge, you could even build a model of an electromagnetic levitation train.