Meteorite science-fair and school projects

Thirty science-fair and school project ideas about meteorites, meteors and craters, sorted by age. Each one starts from a real question and gives a safe method, the equipment, what to measure, how to present it and a way to take it further. All of them use everyday or school equipment, and none involves cutting, heating or putting acid on a meteorite.

Ground rules for every project

• An adult checks every plan before you start, and helps with anything sharp, hot, heavy or high up.
• Never taste, cut, heat, crush or put acid on a rock or meteorite. Wash your hands after handling rocks, soil or dust.
• Never look at the Sun, with or without binoculars, a telescope or sunglasses.
• Night-time observing is always done with an adult, in warm clothes, somewhere dark and away from roads, water and cliff edges.
• Ask permission before going on anyone's land, and never collect from parks, nature reserves or protected sites.
• Write down what you did, what you measured and what went wrong: honest results are good science, even if they are not what you expected.

Turning a project into a good investigation

• Start with a question you can answer by measuring something, and write down your prediction and the reason for it before you begin.
• Change one thing at a time and keep everything else the same, and say what you kept the same.
• Repeat each measurement, take an average, and say how much your repeats varied.
• Choose the right graph: a bar chart for separate groups, a line graph when both things are measured in numbers.
• Explain the pattern with science, say what went wrong and what you would improve, and suggest the next question.