Think green science fair project?

Question

I'm looking for an experiment that would be important socially (like having to do with the environment, global warming, ect.) and be a good science experiment. I was thinking something along the lines of 'how much energy regular vs. florescent light bulbs use up.' the problem is, I'm not sure how to measure the amount of energy used in a single light bulb. Does anyone know how?! Any other environment project ideas? Thanks so much <3

Answer 1

Stop with the florescent lighting! If you want to do some thing that will know their socks off, Go soild state (LED) lighting vs. conventional. SHow the power savings, the lack of lead, mercury and toxic materials (which all CFL/Florescent lights have in them.

   Led Lighting lasts up to 100,000 hours compared to CFL lights which only last 5-8,000 hours

   The list goes on to include better color correction, faster start up, no flickering or humming. These are all reasons why LED lighting is the way to go.

Answer 2

Definitely go with comparing LED lights to conventional light bulbs.

LEDs use a lot less electricity than those energy saver bulbs.

What you need to measture the amount of electricity used in a single bulb is a voltmeter. You can get it someplace like home depot.  Build a simple circuit connected to a light bulb and include a voltmeter on the circuit to show everyone how much energy its using.

Then build another circuit connected to the LED bulb and put a voltmeter on that. If you want to wow people even more, use a small solar panel for the led light. They use so much less electricity that this should be easy.

Another thing, dont go with full sized bulbs, go with miniature bulbs, otherwise you will have a lot of messy wiring and such. Just make sure the 2 bulbs you compare give off about the same amount of light. Otherwise its not a very fair comparison.

Answer 3

How about water conservation using soil amendments that reduce water use?

Check out a product called &quot;Pozzolan&quot; or &quot;Lassenite ATS&quot;.  It is an all natural volcanic diatomaceous soil amendment that absorbs and holds water and nutrients in the soil and then releases the stored water back to the plant.  If every lawn, farm, golf course, municipality, etc. in the US used this product we could save billions of gallons of water every year.  You could do an experiment with growing grass in buckets, one with Pozzolan, one without and maybe one with a different type of soil amendment?  Then measure the time between waterings?

Good luck!