5th Grade Science Fair Project

It's Tuesday morning. Wesley's Science fair project is due tomorrow. He had the whole break to work on it, but who wants to do a science project over Christmas break? Therefore, he really hasn't started anything for it. So it's 8:20 and they leave for school in 10 minutes and he decides to work on it a little. The experiment originally was to predict the difference in bouncing tennis balls that were hot or cold or room temperature and then put it to the test. I thought that was a pretty good one for 5th graders. Then they changed it to see which tennis ball bounced higher - one soaked in milk or one soaked in water. Wesley's theory was that the milk one would be heavier "cause milk has more ingredients." "Weren't you going to do it with temperature?" Yeah, but now we're doing milk and water. Ok...

So, he takes a tennis ball in water, and does three trials of dropping it after soaking it in water for 5, 10, and 15 seconds.

The repeat the trial with a new ball in milk for 5, 10 and 15 seconds (you have to do 3 trials)

 Record the results... and done!

Now it's time to go to school, and he and his lab partner just need to make the poster after school. Well, that was a lot easier than when I helped Hyrum two years ago. Note to self: sometimes it's best to not help. He went over to Anna's house after school and they made their trifold for about an hour and then he came home and pronounced they were done and ready for their presentation tomorrow. Yes, best to let them own it. I was proud of Wes for doing it on his own and that it was there idea even if it seemed a little silly and not really scientific to me. They are just in 5th grade, let it be a 5th graders work.