It has been said that one use for lemon juice is to pour it on windowsills and the bottom of outside doors to keep ants from entering a house. Conduct a project to determine if this is true. Locate an active ant hill. Watch the ants' behavior for a little while and note which direction or directions from the hill they frequently travel. Cut two fresh lemons in quarters to yield eight slices. At a distance of 1 foot from the hill, line several lemon slices across the paths where the ants have been actively walking. Face the exposed part of the lemons toward the hill. Observe the ants' reaction to the lemons.
Seeds contain their own food source to provide them the energy to sprout a root and a leafy stem. Bury two identical seeds in a paper cup with potting soil and two more in another paper cup. One cup will be the experimental cup and the other will be the "control" cup. Two seeds are planted in each in case one seed doesn't germinate, as not all seeds are viable. Determine if magnetism affects the germination process by placing a very strong magnet as close to the seeds in one cup as possible, even laying it on top of the potting soil but not over the top of the seeds. Place both cups in a sunny window and give each the same amount of water. Observe any differences in the germinating seeds in each plant. A fast way to expand this project is to use a variety of different plant seeds, using vegetables such as radishes and flowering plants such as morning glory.
Investigate the consistency of the batter in a commercially-available chocolate chip cookie package. One at a time, break apart each cookie, counting and recording the number of chips in each cookie. Determine if chocolate chips are distributed fairly evenly in the batter, as each cookie would have approximately the same number of chips. A fast way to expand this project is to compare chips in several other bags from the same manufacturer to check for consistency. Also, you can compare the average number of chips in a bag from a well-known brand to that of a lower-priced "store" brand.
The frequency of an oscillating object or an electromagnetic wave is the number of times a cycle is completed. Our ears can hear sound waves that vibrate from about 20 cycles per second to almost 20,000. Our eyes can see a very narrow band of very high frequencies. Radio waves, referred to as RF or radio frequency waves, are used to transmit radio and television signals. Students may be surprised to discover that some devices radiate RF energy that they wouldn't expect. Test various appliances around a house to see if they are radiating invisible RF energy. Tune a portable AM radio to a spot on the dial where there is no station, only a background hissing noise. This will be your RF radiation detector. Test items for RF radiation by bringing your radio in close proximity to each item and listening for a buzz or hum in the radio's sound. Test a computer, a compact fluorescent light bulb, a standard fluorescent light fixture, a television set, another radio, a cell phone and a microwave oven.