She included a Solar System Fact File and a paragraph about Encedalus, the weird moon in Saturn's rings that has geyser fields. Of course there was information about her favorite space topics: black holes, pulsars, and quasars. She made a comet out of Model Magic "ice," gravel and rock "space debris" from our yard, pipe cleaner "dust tail," and a plastic wrap "ion tail."
We used lots of books for our research, too many to list here. But one of our favorites is Bill Bryson's A Really Short History of Everything (a kid's version of his original book.) And this video was really helpful.
She made watercolor-and-glitter portraits of the star cycle: from stellar nebula to star to red giant to planetary nebula to white dwarf. At one point she said, "I should probably include something about the Drake Equation, don't you think, Mom?" Uh, yeah. If you think so, Sweetie...
Dude chose chemistry for his topic. I wish this photo were better--he used chemistry symbols and pictures for all the letters in his title.
He explained the classic states of matter, using a water bottle to represent liquid and a helium balloon to represent gas.
(I didn't take a picture of the balloon, but you can see the string hanging down. We had to hide the balloon after taking pictures, because one of our dogs kept barking at it!)
He used cotton balls in a jar to illustrate density. One jar has 18 cotton balls, and the other has 35 cotton balls. The jars have the same volume but different density.
Here are some common elements from around the house. Our "gold" chain came from the craft store, but the other stuff is real. Aluminum foil, a silver bracelet, an old iron railroad nail, copper wire, and lead fishing weights. Oh, and the helium in the balloon is an element, too!
He drew several atoms, including this aluminum atom. He also included information about the Periodic Table of Elements, physical and chemical changes, and ions and isotopes.
The science fair was lots of fun, and I was really proud of the kids' hard work!
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