This has to be one of the more bizarre science projects undertaken. At the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Skara a research team headed by Patrick Zimmerman is studying the meaning of true bliss for chickens. They are doing this with an experiment where they prepare the chickens for a pleasant and an unpleasant event using a particular acoustic signal.

In one case the sound is followed by the chickens being released into a yard where meal worms are waiting for them. In case of the second sound the chickens are hosed down with water. The research team has observed that the chickens who know that they will get the meal worms begin to flap their wings and clean their feathers while clucking.

While the ones anticipating a cold shower were more subdued and hardly clucked. The research team feels that the chickens don’t just want to be fed but also want to actively participate in the worm hunt. They look forward to the process and find it a pleasurable one which they do not mind repeating.

Of course the chickens may not be all that keen on getting fed if the meal worms keep showing up even before they have a chance to digest the last one, but that may be the makings of another science project altogether. Would you be interested in conducting this one about over feeding chickens?

We have never been closer to finding out about interplanetary biodiversity than at the present date. With the planet Mars being part of an important, ongoing science project there is a lot we are learning about our closest planet. Thanks to data being collected over the last few years by the twin Mars rovers we know a lot more about the planet conditions today than we did a decade ago.

The collected information by the Mars rovers has been studied by scientists across the globe and many have come to the conclusion that there may be life on Mars. Not the little green men kinds that we see in science fiction comics or movies, but some kind of water based primeval life is a definite possibility.

Mars may have also supported terrestrial life of extremophiles or creatures which could adapt to extreme ranges of temperature, low level of oxygen and next to no supply of water. Life on Mars or any other planet in the galaxy would definitely not have followed the same rules as the ones it followed on Earth.

So we should be prepared to find some form of life that we may recognize exactly as being alive. Think of the intelligent rock crystals in Star Trek? Still it would be quite a thrill to actually find life on Mars. It would be a science project whose mission was well achieved.

As part of an interesting science project physicists in Britain are working on bending time in such a manner that events that occurred during a specific period would become invisible. A blackout is experienced quite commonly by a person who gets drunk and loses time. The scientists are taking this time loss and refining it with a more sophisticated method.

The normally continuous beam of light which illustrates the progress of an event is interrupted by this experimental device. Think of the curtain coming down in between acts in a theater performance. It prevents you from seeing the set being changed. Similarly this device prevents you from seeing how one event melted into another.

This light gap which is created by the device makes the events which occurred during the light gap invisible. To mask the light gap the two ends of the events are connected afterward. There is a cloaked event between the ends which stays invisible. This gives the visual image continuously while hiding the missing event perfectly.

Sounds like science fiction but it may not be impossible for long. Who knows when the scientists will perfect the technique of diverting the light around an event and making it disappear from your existence forever. An interesting science experiment to follow indeed.

When you sit down thinking about what you should base your science fair project on, you can be inspired by the strangest sources. The brush you use on your coat, the honey bee outside the window or even the pet dog sleeping at your feet. In fact it was a wet Labrador who inspired a project spin cycle for a washing machine.

At the Georgia Institute of Atlanta the researcher Andrew Dickerson derived a formula to improve the performances of washing machines and spin dryers based on the frequency at which the Labrador shook itself dry. The frequency is 4.3 Hertz in case you were wondering.

The course of the study revealed that a cold and wet animal had to dry off fast to avoid hypothermia. Thus they used the shaking mechanism to pull the water out of their fur and down using gravity to the floor. The research also found that the smaller the animal the faster it needed to shake. Also the more loose the skin of the animal was the more effective the shaking pattern was.

All this may seem irrelevant and useless information but it was used by mechanical engineers and designers to come up with a better and improved design for washing machines. So pick out a strange source for your science fair project and believe me the research may just have unique applications you have not yet through about.

It may sound like science fiction but today it is a viable science project. Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology have come up with a solar reactor that can convert water and carbon dioxide into hydrogen and carbon monoxide.

This is known as synthesis gas.Thanks to the Fischer – Tropsch synthesis process you can convert the synthesis gas or syngas into liquid fuels like petrol or kerosene. The fuel produced in this manner will have absolutely no carbon footprint. It will be the more environmentally friendly production of fuel.

The process could be used to fuel the current breed of electric cars that run on solar power. The solar power would be used for making the solar reactor work and then the Fischer – Tropsch synthesis process would take over to form fuel for the car. The scientists working on the project say that the first solar fuel production facility may be just about 10 years away.

They hope that the solar fuel production facility will be able to produce 16,000 liters of petrol in a period of 8 hours. Such an output capacity will sure help solve the fuel crisis. Here’s looking forward to more interesting developments in this particular science project in the future.