VanCleave's Science Fun

Your Guide to Science Projects, Fun Experiments, and Science Research

Emma Does Science Project Research

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This is a story about Emma, a 10-year old girl, who has to do a science fair project. Emma belongs to a Science Club. During club meetings, Ms. Janice, the club director, and Cosmo, her teen helper guide Emma as she designs and develops her science fair project. This chapter provides easy to follow directions […]

Primary Research: Exploratory Investigation

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Primary Research is information about a topic that you discover yourself, such as an exploratory investigation. An Exploratory investigation is an experiment that you do in order to discover information about a topic. This type of experiment can be to discover the parts of a flashlight, or to answer a specific question. An Example Exploratory […]

Fifth Annual National Rocket Competition

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FIRE UP YOUR STUDENTS! POWER UP YOUR SCIENCE LESSONS WITH ROCKET SCIENCE You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to bring rocketry to your kids. You can do it with the help of Jack & Kathy Colpas! The information on this page is from Jack & Kathy Colpas,  co-directors of the National Rocketry Competition: […]

Heat Transfer: Conduction

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Conduction (or heat conduction) is the transfer of thermal energy between neighboring molecules in a substance due to differences in temperature. Thermal energy is always transferred from a region of higher temperature to a region of lower temperature. The transfer of thermal energy continues until  each region has the same temperature. Heat Conduction takes place […]

Unbalanced Forces Acting On Wishbones

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Eighth Grade Science Standard (TEKS 8.6A) Demonstrate and calculate how unbalanced forces change the speed or direction of an object’s motion. Unbalanced Forces cause an object to accelerate (change speed and/or direction). The three diagrams represent balanced forces and unbalanced forces acting on the ends of a wishbone. These are forces applied by the hands […]

Forces that Break a Wishbone

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The action/reaction pair of forces described in Newton’s Third Law of Motion ALWAYS act on different objects. One way to identify an action/reaction pair of forces is to describe them. If each description is the reverse of the other, then they are an action/reaction pair of forces. For Example: In the diagram, there are two […]

How Doing Work Transfers Energy

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The wagon in the photo is not moving, thus it has no kinetic energy (energy of moving things). If you pull the wagon across the room, you cause the wagon to move a certain distance. In other words, you do WORK on the wagon. Work = Force x distance When you pull (apply a force) […]

How Temperature Affects Heat Energy Transfer

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When heat energy is transferred from one substance to another, the heat energy moves from the hotter substance to the colder substance. Temperature is a measure of how hot or cold a substance is. The higher the temperature of an object, the hotter is the object. A thermometer is an instrument that measure how hot […]