Attention experiment shoppers!

Step right through those electric doors for the grand opening of EXPERI-MART. We know your style: You look sharp, but chances are you thought your teacher would forget all about those science-project deadlines. Fat chance! Wait too long to get started and you'll get a big fat F--for flubbed science project. So you've come to the right place. Of course, we don't just give away ideas. But we can give you the tools to come up with a science-project idea of your very own--one that's simple, straight-forward, and a real crowd- (and teacher-) pleaser.

AISLE HELP YOU

Make a left at the cash register and you'll find shelves and shelves of stuff that can be turned into a science project: chocolate-chip cookies, hair gel, bananas, toilet paper, Scotch tape, sponges, yogurt, roach traps. . . . See anything that interests you? That's the first step: Always research a topic you like. That way, your job is more fun. And choose materials (the stuff you need to do your experiment) that you can afford (e.g., toothpaste, not Toyotas).

Say you go nuts for breakfast cereal (just humor us). As you stroll down the cereal aisle, think of all the characteristics of cereal. These characteristics are variables, things you might want to experiment with. For example, cereal comes in different brands, sizes, shapes, colors, and packages. It gets soggy, stale, and moldy. It has different amounts of sugar, salt, vitamins, fat, and preservatives.

Make a "shopping list" of as many variables as you can. Then pick two variables for your experiment: The first variable should be one you can change (e.g., cereal brand). That's your independent or manipulated variable--the one you change on purpose. The second variable you pick should be one, you can measure (e.g., sogginess) to see if it changes in response to the change you make. That's your dependent or responding variable. (OK, so you can't measure sogginess with a ruler. But you can create a scale to measure different levels of sog, from super soggy to super crunchy.)

ANY QUESTIONS?

With a little creativity, you can turn your two variables into a research question, a question that asks about the effect of the independent variable (cereal brand) on the dependent variable (sogginess). For example: What is the effect of cereal brand on sogginess? In other words, do all cereal brands get super soggy in milk?

The next step: Come up with a hypothesis or guess about what you think the answer will be. For example: "Only cereals with flakes (not doughnut-shaped pieces) get super soggy in milk." Then design an experiment to find out if you're right.

Of course, there are other variables that might affect cereal sogginess--e.g., amount of milk bowl size, the number of flakes or pieces temperature, and the time you leave the cereal in milk. So when you start experimenting, be sure to keep these other variables constant (unchanged). Otherwise, you won't be comparing the cereals under the exact same conditions and your experiment results will be meaningless.

With all this information in your shopping cart you're ready to create an experiment of your very own. And we guarantee that these EXPERI-MART suggestions will help. Our satisfied customers don't call us the Science-project "Super" Store for nothing. So what are you waiting for? Go out and EXPERI-MENT!