I need an engineering project for my Science Fair

[Ryan Ferguson]

Hi! Thank you for reading and (hopefully) responding. I am really desperate right now. For my science fair project, I need to build something that works or does a task. Last year my friends built a linear accelerator and someone else built a potato gun. These are things that work. I desperately need ideas. I know I'm lazy and stupid for waiting until the last minute, but I couldn't think of anything. I have until this Friday to get it done. My dad has a garage and a lot of tools and spare parts to mess around with, and I have money if I need to buy anything, although I would like it to be inexpensive. Please tell me some engineering projects to do. Even some experiment ideas that could be done really soon would be amazing. I appreciate all the help and I hope I can get this done.

 

[jedishrfu]

Welcome to PF!

Have you tried searching the internet for ideas?

The classic ones would be a trebuchet or catapult.

There's a book entitled Mini-Weapons of Mass Destruction where various miniature weapons are built. Perhaps you could scale one up a bit.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556529538/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Another idea would to construct a ball-like structure that can be dropped some height and protect anything stored inside it using bungee cords.

Here's a website where you can find more ideas:

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/Intro-Mechanical-Engineering.shtml

Lastly, you could look into origami and see if you can some cool engineering idea with origami principles.

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/search.shtml?v=&s=origami

 

[Ryan Ferguson]

Thank you for responding. I've been looking and bawling my eyes out like a baby for the past 4 hours. I'm hopeless. I see all these idea but none of them seem possible. I'll keep looking but I would appreciate more. I only have three days left. I need something fast. I'm going to try and stay up for most of tonight and keep looking.

 

[jedishrfu]

How about the Chinese Rainbow bridge that was featured on Nova?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostempires/china/

 

[Ketch22]

For a last minute project I would do a web search for magnet trains. I portion of a day for fabrication and another section that explains how magnetic fileds can be used for propulsion. Easy supplies and construction with a pretty good wow factor.

 

[mpresic]

Barnes and Noble has robotic kits, snap electric circuits, and stuff like that. Microcenter (if you live near one) and other places has arduino controllers. The controllers need you to download software to your computer to work. Raspberry pi ? but that might be complicated. Put together pulleys and explain how they work. I went to one Jr High science fair and I saw this.