There is nothing like a few science projects to make the summer holidays fun.Of course some of these activities are best done under adult supervision so make sure you have someone around.

Make your own Cloud – here’s how you can catch a cloud in a bottle. Pour some water into a two litre plastic bottle. Now light a match and drop it in to the bottle. You can get a grown up to help you do this. Now cover the lid of the bottle immediately. Squeeze the bottle for a while and you will see your cloud beginning to form inside the bottle.

Color your own Flowers – you are going to need a number of white colored flowers. Take your pick from carnations, gladioli, roses,or any other white flower of your choice. Now cut the stem of the flower diagonally. Place it aside. In a flower vase add some water and a spoon full of food color. Now stand the flower stem in the vase and leave it overnight.  The next morning you will find that the flower is no longer white. It would have taken on the tinge of whatever food color you used.

There are a number of other experiments that you can do. Stay posted for the next blog post with even more interesting science projects to do at home.

There are any number of science experiments that you can do at home. It has been proved time and again that a hands on approach to science results in better learning and retention. So if you read about a principle or theory you will remember it with some effort. But the minute you do a practical experiment based on the theory you will remember it with no effort at all.

That’s why hands on science experiments are a must. So what are a few such experiments that you can take on? There are many simple projects that need no elaborate set up, materials or extra learning.Further more each room in the house can give you a science experiment.

You can build yourself a baking soda volcano in the kitchen. Or do an experiment on buoyancy in the bathroom. You can use light waves from a lamp in the sitting room to prove that light travels in a straight line. As you can see the possibilities are many and endless.

All that is required is a seeking spirit and a curious mind. If you look at everything and wonder how it works you care well on your way to a hands on encounter with science experiments.

All of us have done some science projects at one time or the other. They are an inescapable part of modern education. However these formal science projects teach us more than the basic principle that they are based on. They teach us different transferable skills that stay with is long after these projects have been forgotten.

So what are these skills? The first would be the ability to make a prediction. One that is based on facts and consideration, not on a guess. This prediction is what serves as the basis for the hypothesis of the science project.

The next skill is knowing that if one variable changes the whole project can change. This cause and effect relationship is what helps us understand that if you change one thing the whole situation changes.

Then there is the skill comprehension. We read so many books, magazines, and articles to do the research for our project. We understand what is essential and leave the superfluous out. Then we get down to actually doing the science project.

Of course we also enhance our language skills and arithmetic skills if the project involves manipulating numerical data. Naturally these are skills that we put to use long after the science project is over.

The ever evolving science experiments in robotics have led to the discovery of a number of new technologies. There are robots who can lift heavy loads, like the industrial ones that South Korea builds. There are robots that can assemble a car like the ones in automobile factories owned by Hyundai.

There are robots that sing and dance karaoke like the Japanese robots that were showcased last year. There are robots who are part of the entertainment industry who stand in as dummies for humans a t times. There are robots that can perform surgical operations of the spine and make a huge difference in a handicapped person’s life.

Then there are robots who can sense the environment and take cues about actions to take from it. They have such advanced sensors that they can predict oncoming rain and make you carry an umbrella when you leave the building. There are robots that clean up huge buildings in no time at all.

There are robots that can have an intelligent conversation with you by answering your questions correctly. And there will be a number of robots who will do all this and more in the future. Robotics is the science of the future and they will have innumerable science projects of interest in the coming decades.

Building your own robot can be quite the science fair project. With each passing year you can work on additional features on either the same robot or a different more advanced model. There is only one way to get the robots to improve and that is by constantly upgrading them as technology improves.

There are people who develop robot collections and there are people who buy them. Recently Rick Newman was in the news for his fascinating collection of robotic gadgets. The man is currently said to have the largest robot collection in the world. His eclectic collection includes hobby robots, educational robots and a great deal more.

The man is working on a Halloween computer  lights, sound and laser show. Its going to take place in his own front yard and will last the full month of October. The spooky looking moving figures are all movie robots. And he’s also thinking about doing a re-enactment of MJ’s Thriller using the same robots later in the year.

Of course you can get in over your head if you have that many robots to deal with. Still its not a bad idea to begin your own robot collection with a few that you have built yourself. So for this science fair maybe you can build a spooky looking robot that can double up as a drink serving waiter?

Despite their best efforts and a number of science projects being devoted to the cause the scientists are yet to create the ultimate robot helper. The kind you see in science fiction movies going about doing a number of helpful little chores such as serving drinks, cleaning the house and going shopping for groceries. These humanoid robots are still a distant dream.

The robots that are truly useful today don’t even look like humans. They are more like individual gadgets which are designed for a specific task alone rather than the multitasking Irona in Richie Rich comic books. Of course it would be everyone’s dream to own a robot like Irona who could do a multitude of different tasks and even be able to fly you out of hot spots.

Still robots are coming along as best as they can and robotics has succeeded in making a good deal of difference in industrial operations. Take the Australian Sheep Rearing Industry for example. They have now got robots that handle automated sheep meat processing. It is more efficient and sanitary than the older methods that involved actual human labor.

Robotic scientists are also learning new ways to get their robots to handle material, and find their way about obstacles. Each new technology that is developed brings us closer to that ultimate multitasking personal robot assistant from the science fiction movies and book. Maybe this science project is what will make your career.

At the Wishdoing Restaurant in China ages of science experiments have finally paid off. The restaurant is the first in China to employ or shall we say deploy two Robot Chefs. These robots can cook eight well-liked Chinese dishes such as spicy diced chicken with peanuts and Mapo Tofu, bean curd with chili sauce and Kung Pao Chicken.

What’s more the robot chefs will not have you waiting for long as they can cook a dish in three minutes flat. Talk about fast food. The restaurant workers need to push buttons to feed the name of the dish, the ingredients needs and the quantity and step back. The robot chef will then take over and cook the dish in record time.

It takes less than three minutes to clean the previous dish mess and restart work on the next dish. Talk about good time management. The robot chefs were showcased at the Shanghai World Expo 2010 at the Shanghai Corporate Pavilion. They were a major success with the crowd.

The efficiency of the robot chefs at the restaurant have seen the parent company Shanghai Qi Ding Food Development decide to use the robot chefs at its 100 plus restaurants all over China. Officials feel that since they assure low emissions of carbon, food hygiene, and standard tastes at all branches, they will be the trend in the future fast food segment. Want a new science project idea? Build a robot that can cook a burger.

One of the most fascinating ongoing science project is the development of robots. The mere thought of having a mechanical being take over menial tasks has been a truly popular one down the ages. However is it only now that the thought is being translated into reality by scientists across the globe.

The initial robots have been nothing more that a tin man that could just barely walk leave aside do useful things, but today we have far more advanced robots. In all fields robots are proving their worth. There are medical robots that assist doctors with surgery such as the Da Vinci robotic arm.

There are robots that are programmed to play football such as the ones designed by the students who participate in the FIRST competition for robotics. There are even robots that help contain nuclear leaks such as the ones deployed at the Japanese nuclear plant disaster site.

The dawn of robots is indeed upon us. The robots that are built today are also being tested for artificial intelligence. The robots today are capable of learning from their own mistakes making them smarter than some humans I know. The truth is that robots have always fascinated us and now you can make a science fair project out of all the robots that you admire.

The ecology conservationists are always talking about how the chemicals we seem to use mindlessly each day are actually polluting the earth badly. There is a lot of debate on how the water polluted with dish washers and detergents enters the water cycle and causes harm to the environment in terms of both flora and fauna.

In this science project we are going to try and prove if detergents actually do affect the growth of plants. To do so we are going to use three identical plants and use one of them as control. That means the control plant will be kept under the same environmental conditions but will get regular water. The second plant will be given half cup detergent with half cup water. While the their plant will get half cup dish washer fluid and half cup water.

Use the above combination to water the three potted plants on a daily basis for a week and observe the effects on each individual plant. By using our hypothesis it would stand that the plant that got normal water grows at a steady pace. At the same time the plants that are getting the supposedly poisonous mix of detergent and dish water should not be doing quite so well. Is that really what happens in your science project? Check and see.

Vitamins are supposed to be good for you, but are they good for plants too? That’s the question we try to answer with this science project. Just how good are vitamins for plant growth? Do they make a marked difference or do they make no difference at all. What are fertilizers after all if not some distant cousin of vitamins? They make up for deficiencies in the soil to give the plant better growth don’t they? So why should the vitamins that help us not help plants grow better too.  Let’s experiment and find out.

Take three identical saplings and use one of them as control. The other two are going to get vitamins and fertilizer doses for the experiment. You will need to place the plants all in the same area so that they can get the same amount of exposure to sun and the other natural elements. They will be watered together at the same time and in the same quantity. The only difference will be the supplements that they get.

The plants will be observed for a three month period with recording of observations made each week. The growth spurts of each plant will be notes in inches and recorded in a journal which will prove useful to make comparisons as time progresses. The Science Project can be terminated any time after there is enough data to provide a well rounded project.