Science fair projects with food (that nobody eats)

What to expect

Food makes a good science fair project because it's cheap, it's already in the house, and it changes in ways you can measure. A cut apple goes brown, an egg floats once the water is salty enough, a raisin rides bubbles up and down in fizzy water, and a stick of celery pulls coloured water up toward its leaves. Each project here changes one thing, measures one thing and does it three times, so the food is the thing being tested, not a snack.

Nobody eats the food that's been tested, and the safety strip on every one of these says so. That's partly about clean hands and partly about the rules: tasting food to compare it uses people as the thing being tested, and the school rules we read say that needs a review and a signed OK before it starts. So these projects ask what happens to the food, never what someone thinks of it. Put a tray down, wash your hands when you're done, and throw the food away after the last try. A few, like the green onions and the potatoes, keep growing for a week or two, and the logbook is where those days go.

Counted from the projects on this page: 1 about how things move, 11 about water, ice and mixing, 2 about growing and weather; 12 using kitchen things, 2 using the outdoors and some seeds. 2 are free with what most houses have, and the rest cost about $2 or about $1 or about $3. Testing takes from 1 to 14 days. 5 have a step a grown-up does, marked on the page.