Need idea for science project

Sarah, if you use the search engine accessible at the bottom of this letter, you'll find projects on zinc plating of pennies and copper plating of quarters and keys, and you'll find lots of Q&As about cleaning of pennies, rusting of nails, etc.

But something that interested me at your age was very simple heat treating. Find some sewing needles, heat them red hot on your kitchen stove, and let them cool down very very slowly. They will then be soft and you will be able to bend them without breaking (wear goggles ⇦ on eBay or Amazon [affil link] anyway in case the experiment doesn't work!). Bend a few of them and then take some of the bent ones, reheat them, and drop them into a cup of water while still red hot. They'll be hard again in their bent shape.

Try the same with straight pins, see if you can make them hard by heating and quenching or if they refuse to get hard.

You can also quench some needles in warm olive oil instead of water and see what that does.

It is a very simple project that produces easily observable results but lets you investigate as deep as you wish.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

"Naked Eggs and Flying Potatoes: Unforgettable Experiments that Make Science Fun"
by Steve Spangler

on Amazon or eBay
or AbeBooks
(affil link)

Hi Sarah,

What type of surface technology would you like to work with ?

A year ago I worked on a private project about making something new to the hotdip galvanizing industry. I worked with technics that should have made it possible to print pictures into the galvanized surface - unfortunately I didn't finish the project, while I did some calculations, and found the method too expensive :(

Anyways, now I know that it is possible - but my conclusion was, that it is NOT economic NOR environmentally friendly to use my method!

You can work on a project like this, or you could make your science project about something like:

1. Reducing production costs (very popular subject to make projects about)
2. Waste/pollution management (another great subject)
3. Programs for testing or production purpose. (difficult according to your limited time)

Good luck,