Did you ever think that life was much simpler centuries ago. That the studies were easy and life was rocking? It would interest the more serious students among you to know that you are not the first lot of students in human civilization struggling with mathematical concepts such as those inherent in trigonometry.

An ancient clay tablet which was discovered in the early 1900s in the area which is currently known as southern Iraq, proved to American archaeologist Edgar Banks that the ancient Babylonian civilization was fairly well educated. The tablet which is called Plimpton 322 is said to have been inscribed in the ancient Sumerian city of Larsa around 1800 BC.

It has 15 rows of inscription which detail the relationship between the three sides of a right angled triangle. The trigonometric table is a treasure trove for researchers as it proved that fairly complicated mathematics was studied and used by this ancient civilization that predates even the Greeks by nearly a 1000 years.

That ensures that the kids of this civilization also were made to study the Pythagoras theorem,  ironically about a thousand years before the Greek mathematician was born. Let’s get back to the hypotenuse and it’s opposite sides in the diagram in our book, now shall we?

When Marco Polo, the Italian merchant traveler crossed the sand dunes in Whistling Dune Bay, the humming sounds from the dunes made him believe that they were haunted by ghosts and evil spirits. Today the same sound producing dunes are an active part of China’s tourism attractions.

The sand dunes create a booming sound as the grains of sand rub against each other. The sound is further amplified because of the dunes unique internal structure. The study conducted by Dr Nathalie Vriend, Cambridge University, revealed that the sounds created by mere sand grains rubbing against each other can be heard for miles.

Now there is a beautiful tourist resort located close to the sand dunes in Whistling Dune Bay. The hotel guests have the opportunity to create their own unearthly sounds by sliding down the dune or simply squeezing a handful of this special sand to create a unique croaking sound.

It would make an interesting science project to see how the mass of the sand used affected the level of sound created. Using a sledge to go down the mountain will definitely make a much louder, almost avalanche type of noise than merely jogging over the dunes would create.

Most animals have a tendency to favor one side of their bodies. 7 out of 10 chimpanzees are right handed. While almost all kangaroos are left handed. In cats the females tend to be right handed, while the males are generally left handed. So how come such a vast majority of the human population turned out to be right handed?

The answer may lie in the fact that humans are essentially social animals that need to live and work in groups to survive. This means that they need to be able to use the tools that have been developed by other people in the group. Somewhere between when the first tools were developed 1.5 million years ago, to the present age, it was an adaptation which took over our species.

Does that mean being left handed is bad? Not at all. In combat situations being left handed is unexpected, and thus it can be a major advantage. Perhaps that is why even in sports you will find that the left handed players tend to have an advantage over the right handed players and tend to do better. Think of all the famous left handed tennis players like Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, and Rafael Nadal. A science project on left handed sportsmen would be interesting.

One of the solutions to green transportation is the electric car. The engine of this car does not burn any fossil fuels and so will not emit any smoke or pollution. This can have a huge impact on improving the quality of air in a city. However just how green is an electric car?

The vehicle still needs electric power to charge it’s battery and run. What is the source of this electric battery? In many cases it is a coal fired power station. Considering that the electric car is charged from the fossil fuel generated electricity, the green element becomes null and void.

The greenhouses gases emitted during the actual production of the electricity used to run the electric car would probably rival the greenhouse gases generated by the regular petrol fueled cars. Yes, the electric car is a good scientific innovation, but it’s just as green as the power used to run it.

Perhaps the focus of new science projects should be a way to individually harness green sources of energy to be able to create enough electricity to run an electrical car. That would truly be a revolution in the world of developing green energy to reduce pollution.

Human beings need traffic lights and a bunch of rules to ensure that everyone on the road drives safely. Still we manage to have accidents and bang into each other. So how is it then that a school of fish seem to swim effortlessly together, without banging into each other and through some pretty athletic twists and turns in the water?

Studies show that each fish tends to have a preferred position in the school. Some of them are natural leaders and tend to move to the front of the school, while others prefer to follow. The fish use the pressure sensitive pores along their bodies known as the lateral line.

These sensors allow the fish to feel the pressure of the waves and the distance from it’s companions. Should a fish be left behind more than two fish lengths it will speed up to regain it’s position in the school. If it is closer than two fish lengths to the fish in front of it, it will slow down.

The position of the fish makes a lot of difference to it’s movement and role in the school. It would make an interesting science project to see just how different species of fish move in their schools.

DNA or  Deoxyribonucleic acid is a molecule containing all the information required for an organism to be born, sustained and reproduced. We are literally a product of our parents DNA. It consists of base pairs which hold the data required to regenerate a similar organism. This molecule is also used in forensics to identify individuals. The DNA is a long lasting molecule that is tough to destroy.

Just how long can DNA last? A study conducted on the leg bones of the extinct moa birds in New Zealand found the half life of DNA to be 521 years. Half life refers to the time needed for a substance to lose a specific property by half. In this case it was established that in about a 1000 years a strand of DNA will lose 75% of the genetic information coded into it’s base pairs.

Bacterial RNA or Ribonucleic acid is much tougher than human DNA. RNA extracted from ice crystals more than 419 million years old are found to be almost complete. Of course the RNA consists of only short fragments of 55 base pairs to start with. This science project explains how bacteria continues to survive and grow even after being dormant in extremely hostile environment.

Airlines are constantly battling the rising prices of aviation fuel. The refined fossil fuels that are used by commercial airlines are not only responsible for higher air fares, they will soon be hard to access. Does that mean that flying will soon become redundant? Not if researchers at the University of Illinois have their way.

The researchers at the University of Illinois’ Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology have been working on a science project which involves creating bio fuel to run air crafts on. They have used 54 acres to produce a specially engineered sugarcane which is able to provide a bio fuel that can run a plane for ten hours.

To consider how remarkable that is, we need to know that a single gallon of regular aviation fuel is able to fly an air craft for just one second. Besides sugarcane the researchers have created bio fuel from soybeans as well. Not only is plant based fuel cheaper to produce than fossil fuels, it has no harmful side products that are released into the environment.

The residual sugar that is left over after the oil is removed from the sugarcane to be processed as bio fuel, can also be converted into ethanol or sold commercially. There is the matter of some engineering changes to be made to the engine, but overall the bio fuel will prove more economical than the current aviation fuel.

In the year 2011 China had launched a space station into orbit around the Earth. Called Tiangong-1 or ‘Heavenly Palace’, the space station has been in a steadily decaying orbit since March 2016. The 8.5 tonne space station is currently about 216 miles above the Earth and headed towards the planet for a fiery end.

As per Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist from Harvard University, now that the altitude is getting lower the space station will decay at a much faster rate. He expects the space station to come down in a few months time, which could be late 2017 or early 2018.

While the majority of the space station will be torn into chunks which will burn up upon reentry into the environment of the planet, there will still be a number of large pieces weighing up to 100 kg that will slam into the Earth. The Chinese government is closely monitoring the descent of the Heavenly Palace, but is unable to predict exactly where the impact will be made.

Chinese’s CNSA space agency said that the probability of endangering and causing damage to aviation and ground activities is very low. This is one science project that is going up in flames, and even it’s inventors have no idea how it’s all going to end.

The environment on Mars is a lot more hostile for human beings on the surface of the planet than it would be under it. Lava tubes formed by volcanic activity have been found on Earth in places such as as Hawaii, Iceland, Sicily, Galapagos Islands, and North Queensland in Australia. All of these places have had volcanic activity that have left behind cool underground tubes that can go up to 65 km.

Scientists propose that using lava tubes on the planet Mars may be a better place to serve as a human habitat than constructing one on the surface. The underground network would provide protection from the extreme atmospheric elements as well as the sun’s radiation. Some tubes may be large enough to establish small townships given that they are nearly 250 m in width and can stretch for many kilometers.

The high resolution digital terrain models created from the data gathered through space craft instrumentation suggests that making Lava Tube Human Habitats on Mars may be possible.  They would have enough space for streets and even smaller housing structures within. The well shielded townships may be where future human missions are carried out. This is one science project that could quite literally shape humanity’s future on Mars.

Growing enough food to feed everyone is one of the biggest challenges that the current generation faces. Humanity is growing by leaps and bounds and it’s important to not waste the food we have. One of the biggest sources of food wastage is the restaurant business. A team of cyclists in France have come up with an interesting solution to this problem.

La Tricyclerie is a group of cycling enthusiasts who have been appreciated by the United Nations for their unique concept of taking restaurant waste and turning it into compost using electric bicycles. They go collecting biodegradable waste from the restaurants and convert it into the “black gold” which can be used to fertilize fields.

The anti waste tour started in 2015 with eight restaurants but has grown to handle 23 outlets now. These days they are collecting 1.5 tonnes of waste per month. They have reduced the volume of restaurant food waste by 40% in the city of Nates. Other cities and restaurants are showing an interest in duplicating their system.

This is one science project that has come into the list of 12 finalists worldwide for the UN’s “Young Champions for the Earth” competition. There were a total of 2,400 entries and the prize of $15000 is going to be announced in November 2017.