Who says slime can’t be used as a tool for scientific inquiry?
Having trouble thinking up cool and creative slime science fair projects with your kids?
Science fair projects can easily turn into a massive tug of war with your kids – mainly you tugging them to get something done, and them pulling your hair out.
Kids love to make slime.
Why not combine making slime with your science fair project? OK, you might want to say that making slime in and of itself isn’t really a science fair project – but what if you could use your slime as a tool to amp up your science fair projects?
Below are slime science fair project ideas that promote inquiry based science and will be a ton of fun for your kids.
Don’t forget to grab a small notebook and your camera as you are making your slime and using it to test things. It takes a little extra effort up front, but making your board will be a million times easier if you don’t have to completely redo your project the night before to get content!
7 Science Fair Projects with Slime Science
Because we all need more slime science fair project ideas, right?
1. Magnetic field line slime science
Slime science fair projects are awesome because kids love slime! You will need to make our recipe for magnetic slime first, then you can use it to ask questions such as:
What makes magnetic slime magnetic?
Instead of adding in iron filings let kids choose a variety of items to add to their slime to see if it makes it magnetic. Ideas include glitter, sawdust, tiny paper confetti, little foam balls, etc.
Try to keep the objects you add in to slime small. Then test to see which slimes you made are magnetic and which are not. Is there a common thread? Can plastics be magnetic? Paper? Metal? You see how this can turn into a stellar science fair project?
What do magnetic field lines look like?
Magnetic field lines are one of the few forces of nature we can actually see (unlike gravity or the strong force). Use your batch of magnetic slime to view the magnetic field lines of a variety of different magnets. Does the shape of the magnet affect the magnetic field lines? Do stronger magnets create more magnetic field lines? What happens when you add magnets together? What if you hold two magnets close to each other?
Did you know? This project won the first place blue ribbon and a district gold medal for one young scientist in a science fair?!?
Project Ingredients:
- Clear slime (Clear glue, baking soda, contact solution with boric acid, and water)
- Iron filings
- Magnets
2. Glow in the dark slime science
Glow in the dark science fair projects are super cool. Truly awesome. Just imagine if you could make glow in the dark slime the center of your science fair projects? I mean seriously, how cool would that be?
The problem is, it seems like making glow in the dark slime is just for fun. How can you do science with it? Here are some slime science fair project ideas you could do with glow in the dark slime!
First, see our recipe for glow in the dark slime, and proceed from there.
See how the light color affects the glow.
This project requires you to learn how glow in the dark powder glows (yay science!). OF course, why stop there – that is more like a research project and not a science project that asks a question, forms a hypothesis, and challenges you to think of a test, then record results.
Glow in the dark powder absorbs light during the day or from a flashlight and then re-emits is slowly over time.
I will save all the cool details on how this works for you to discover, but here is an interesting question: If the glow in the dark powder absorbs light and then re-emits it, does the color of incident light matter (that is does the color of light you shine on your slime matter)?
You can test this by figuring out a way to measure the intensity of glow in the dark slime after, say, 10 seconds of intense red light, orange light, yellow light…you get the idea. One idea could be to take a photograph of the slime in the dark, at the same camera settings and comparing the images.
See if all glow powders are created equal.
There are lots of different colors of phosphorescent materials that glow in red, green, orange, blue, yellow, purple. The whole rainbow is available, which could make for a really cool experiment.
If you make one big batch of clear slime, split it up, and add in measured amounts of different glow powders into each small chunk, do they glow the same? Yes it glows? Why? No? Why?
It really makes you wonder, doesn’t it? And that moment of “hmmmmm I wonder” is where all science projects should live.
Project Ingredients:
- Glow in the dark powder
- Clear glue
- Contact solution (with boric acid)
- Baking soda
3. Electric slime
Electric slime is a fun and creative way to make circuits while playing with slime at the same time! Who wouldn’t want to hang out and make fun LED colors all day? Check out our post on making your electrically conductive slime light up and ask yourself this:
Can I make better conductive slime?
This requires you to learn about substances that are conductive and try to mix them into your clear slime base. Test the slime either by looking at the amount of light emitted from your diode or using a multimeter to discover if you made even better conductive slime.
Can I make insulating slime?
This is the reverse of the above. If you can engineer more conductive slime, can you engineer slime that doesn’t conduct at all?
Can I make any color of the LED?
RGB leds allow you to color mix and create a wealth of fun colors. Can you make any color? Is one color more prominent than others? You could make a color map of your slime and LED as a function of location of the battery wire in the slime, then try to figure out why that is.
Project Ingredients:
- Clear slime
- RGB LED (these ones are pricier but a lot larger and more fun for littler hands)
- 9V battery (you can get 2 for $1 at the dollar store)
- 9V battery cap
4. Test-taking slime science
Here is a cool slime science fair project that I saw at my daughter’s school and just had to snap a shot. It was so well done and incredibly creative.
The student aimed to test if slime made you a better test taker! She used a timed test and the tested the ability to smoosh slime during the test or not. Then, she recorded and graphed the slime with and without scores.
5. Change the chemistry of slime
Slime is an art. While it is forgiving, you still have to be careful because you can certainly ruin a batch of slime. Which makes you wonder, how important are the ingredients you use in slime? I wonder… Check out our five slime recipes to get started on this project.
Mix up the proportions of your slime recipe
What happens if you double the amount of borax? What if you skip adding water? While you don’t typically have to be measuring your ingredients on the dot when it comes to slime, if you totally botch it your slime will turn out different.
The questions it, different how? You could devise a series of projects that alter the quantities of an ingredient (your variable) and look at how it affects the stretchiness, gooeyness, sliminess of the slime.
Swap out ingredients for your slime recipe
Some slimes use baking soda, what happens if you choose a different base to do this job? Some slimes use boric acid, what if you use a different acid? Does the type of acid or base used matter? What if you use oil instead of water? Does the type of glue matter?
There are a ton of ways to mix up the ingredients in slime and record how that affects the end result. This makes a perfect science fair project.
6. Engineering slime science
Engineering slime will mean taking our third slime science project idea (mixing up the ingredients) one step further by asking how you can engineer a slime to excel at a particular task. Check out our slime recipes to use as a jumping point.
Create a slime that will make the biggest bubble
How can you mix up a batch of slime that will be stretchy enough to make a huge bubble, yet stiff enough to not just drip to the floor in a puddle of goo? This makes for a great afternoon of making lots of batches of slime!
Create a slime that you can use to build towers
We often use marshmallows to create toothpick towers. Can you think of a way to engineer a slime that could replace the marshmallows? What qualities would that slime need?
7. Use slime to make lenses
Here is our last set of science fair projects with slime. I’m sure there are a ton more ideas out there though. Make some slime lenses!
This will prompt you to learn about how light and lenses work, with the added bonus that you get to play with slime and lasers. Seriously, this is a rad science fair project idea.
Mix up a batch of clear slime and try to use that slime to make lenses that will bring light together, or spread light apart. This will require research on terminology (what is a converging lens?) and ray tracing. You could ask the question, what focal length lens can I make with slime?
Project Ingredients:
- Clear slime (clear glue, contact solution, baking soda)
- Laser pointer
- Acrylic lenses (optional but suggested)
