School-science-projectsSchool science projects are some of my favorite memories. I know that it really labels me as a nerd, but I don't care. I wear my nerd badge with pride. Back in my school days, I used to stay up nights pondering science project ideas. I would always be on the lookout for the perfect one, the one that would let me win the all state science fair competition.
Of course, like most kids my age I had unrealistic expectations about what school science fair projects I could accomplish. I wanted to outdo all of the school science projects that we saw demonstrated in the classroom. I even wanted to prove my teachers wrong. To be honest, I was a bit of a junior mad scientist. I thought I could violate the fundamental laws of physics. For one of my middle school science fair projects, for example, I tried to build a perpetual motion machine. I was convinced that it would work. I knew that my teacher was wrong when he told me that it was impossible. I would have the very best school science project, and then everyone would look up to me.
Obviously, many of my school science projects did not work out. The perpetual motion machine, in particular, was an embarrassing flap. Basically, it was a wheel with magnets that turned for a little while and then stopped. That was it. A perpetual motion machine that fails to work is not very interesting to look at.
As I got older, I got more sophisticated in my school science projects. I would actually ask my teachers for help – something which I had never done as a kid. It was amazing how much easier this made things. They had books and books of school science projects, showing all kinds of experiments meant to demonstrate basic principles of physics. The problem was that I wanted to do something new. There was no point in doing something that someone else had already done. The judges would see right through that, I thought.
Eventually, I got sick of school science projects altogether. I liked some of the demonstrations in physics class, and I liked to see things blow up in chemistry, but that was about it. I kept my interest in science, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to do the kind of research that I wanted to until I was in college. That was when I got to do real school science projects!
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