Science Fair Ideas for 7th Grade: A Success Formula for 7th Grade Science Fair Projects
Science fairs are renowned for allowing science-inclined youth to get in touch with their local science communities while providing an outlet for them to conduct manageable experiments and research that they can handle on their own. Not only do Science Fairs provide amazing opportunities to explore science and STEM-related fields like Physics, Math, Aerodynamics, Chemistry, Biology and much more, but they also encourage students to think like researchers and appreciate the trial and error in professional research and development. However, there are limitations that can impact a student’s capability to create a science project that is suited especially for their grade level. May it be rigor, availability, or the overall appeal of a certain project, students can face trouble picking out a STEM-based project that they will enjoy. In this blog post, we are sharing science fair ideas for 7th grade students: a success formula for 7th grade science fair projects!
Roadblocks, Challenges, and Ideas to Avoid
In this section, we are addressing some of the roadblocks, challenges, and ideas to avoid as a 7th grade student working on a science fair project.
Finding an interest
Not only is finding a STEM topic that piques your interest crucial, but necessary to have a project at all. While reading about actual research and science developments is an excellent source of inspiration, most of these research topics are intense for a seventh-grader under time constraints to comprehend. If a seventh-grade student reads about a topic online, it may be challenging for them to find a project idea that is both intellectually stimulating and feasible to conduct independently, given the potential difficulty in obtaining materials and conducting experiments. For instance, a seventh-grader may not have expensive lab materials or may need a lot of help from an adult. Browsing online for a project is a great way to find ideas as long as it is from a credible source and you do not copy the project word for word.
Creating a Frequently-Chosen Project
You might be familiar with a baking soda and vinegar volcano, a potato battery, or maybe even a solar system model. Creating a science project is about fulfilling your personal curiosity and pushing the boundaries of your knowledge. These projects do not allow students to make research-based hypotheses and expand their knowledge. Moreover, these ideas are repetitive and won’t appeal to your peers or the judges because a student would just be copying an idea that has been done before. While taking inspiration from these ideas is beneficial, copying them certainly is not.
Digressing from STEM
Students that do not have a profound interest in STEM can find it difficult to choose a topic for their project and as a result they often do not choose STEM-related topics at all. For example topics like reviewing makeup, market trends, baking, and comparing products are not topics you should make a science project about. While you can argue that baking contains chemistry principles that a seventh grader is capable of learning, you cannot observe, test or explain your findings in a scientific sense. For instance, you can study the effect of eggs in a cake mix, but you cannot use your research to explain the science behind the effect of eggs in a cake mix or answer a scientific question about baking. It is easy to confuse something as being STEM-related and by listing a field of science or engineering like chemistry, environmental science and robotics you can search for projects that specifically relate to a STEM topic, therefore preventing this mistake. It is important to remind yourself that a Science Fair project should answer a science or STEM-based question.
Difficulty Planning
Through my personal experience with Science Fairs, I have noticed that students who are in middle school cannot grasp the importance of planning and scheduling a project that can support mishaps or incidents that can delay time. After all, Science Fair projects depend on execution and a poorly planned project has a huge risk of being an incomplete project. Students, including myself, have had to buy more supplies or adjust certain variables while conducting experiments. You must have time allotted for mistakes and mishaps or you may not have time to reflect on the results of your experiments. This also means that you cannot procrastinate if you wish to have a successful project or you may start your project too late and may not be able to finish it. Here are some tips for planning….
List every material (you may need and buy extras)
Create a timetable of when you will research, conduct experiments, and analyze your results
Have someone to hold you accountable
Make sure you have time on your schedule to spend on your project
Human Research
A huge role in research is ethics and you must make sure that any experiment or project you partake in is safe for yourself and anyone involved in your research. Avoiding humans partaking in your research is probably the best route. If you conduct an experiment on diet and test multiple people, you may not have credible information because there is still so much information we are unaware of and nutrition is different for everyone. Moreover,you would have to consult a doctor and get approval which may be something a seventh grader is not able to handle.
Solutions to your Roadblocks and Innovative Ideas!
In this section, we are sharing our solutions to your roadblocks, along with science fair ideas for 7th grade students.
Focus on One Topic
Most students tend to pick an experiment that involves multiple fields of science. Remember the potato battery, that project alone involves electrochemistry, redox electrons, electrical circuits, and many more concepts. Understanding these concepts may take up ample time that could be used more effectively. Additionally, a seventh-grade student may not be interested in briefly understanding all of these concepts. Instead, your time is more used focusing on one concept like aerodynamics or inertia because analyzing one topic extraordinarily gives your work quality rather than decently explaining and reflecting on multiple topics.
Find a Project that Involves Your Interests
As I mentioned earlier, students who do not have an interest in STEM may have some difficulty finding topics that interest them. Instead of digressing from STEM-related topics, find ways to incorporate them. If you love Language Arts, choose words and say them with different facial expressions and make strangers, friends or classmates respond to find how humans react to tone or expression. Make sure you relate them to psychology principles to add scientific explanation to your research. Also, you can explore language models like ChatGPT! Record the data you collect from these experiments and analyze it. If you love art, you could do something similar and study how humans react to color. Math and Engineering related projects are also amazing ideas. You could study aerodynamics and engineering with paper airplanes and create your models based on your knowledge of these topics.
Lean into Public Interest and Educate People
One way to really involve yourself with our planet and the interest of the public is to focus on science concepts that impact our daily lives. For instance, environmental science is a topic in which you can also educate people while working for a cause. Ask a parent to help you analyze water pollution in your nearby pond, stream, or lake. Create models of new housing that use sustainable energy. There are endless possibilities because environmental science is such a diverse field! Additionally, science fairs focus heavily on educating your peers and your environmental science project can inspire others to be more environmentally conscious.
Pick a Topic You are Currently Learning in School
When I was in seventh grade, I recall learning about genetics. You could ask your classmates what their eye color is and try to predict the eye color/ hair color of their parents. Later, ask them for the eye color/hair color of each of their parents, grandparents, or even great-grandparents and record this data. How accurate were your predictions, was there a recessive gene involved? What could have been the dominant gene? Ask if anyone had a genetic mutation and only use the best data.
Presenting Your Project Creatively
In the world of science, presenting your information creatively is very important because a scientist must be able to articulate their ideas. Instead of using a tri-fold board, maybe include a 3D model. Taking pictures is an amazing way to provide visuals that make your project stand out. Use data to support anything you say and use analogies and cite research articles or sources that you took inspiration from. Provide eye-catching visuals and stress your passion for this project so you can highlight its value and capture the interest of others. Crediting your sources not only proves the credibility of your own research but represents the websites or scientists that you learned your information from. Analyze your information critically and concisely because a decent project idea with flawless execution is much better in quality when compared to a good idea executed poorly.
About Inspirit AI
AI Scholars Live Online is a 10 session (25-hour) program that exposes high school students to fundamental AI concepts and guides them to build a socially impactful project. Taught by our team of graduate students from Stanford, MIT, and more, students receive a personalized learning experience in small groups with a student-teacher ratio of 5:1.
