Middle School Projects

Here's a list of projects targeted at the middle school educational level. Middle school students can do these projects for fun or as part of an educational science project.

Do you want to grow a big single crystal instead of a mass of crystals? Then try out these instructions for growing a big alum crystal. You can apply the techniques used here to grow big single crystals of other substances, too.

Monoammonium phosphate crystals are among the quickest, easiest, and safest crystals you can grow. Learn how to grow these crystals yourself.

Introduce students to chemical reactions and experimentation using common materials and baggies.

Making a baking soda and vinegar volcano is safe and easy, plus it only requires a few inexpensive kitchen ingredients. Here are detailed instructions for making a volcano, plus a look at the chemical reactions involved.

This is a twist on the classic baking soda volcano, where you use the ingredients to make squirt-able fountains of foam.

Baking soda crystals are easy to grow. Here are step-by-step instructions explaining how you can grow baking soda crystals yourself.

Make your own stalagmites and stalactites using baking soda or sodium bicarbonate. It's an easy, non-toxic crystal project.

Use static electricity to bend a stream of flowing water. This is an easy science activity that illustrates how opposite electrical charges attract each other.

You can make black snake or glow worm fireworks yourself, safely and easily.

Do real snowflakes melt too quickly? Grow a borax snowflake, color it blue if you like, and enjoy the sparkle all year long!

Use chemistry to make a bouncing polymer ball, then alter the procedure to see the effect the changes have on the charactertistics of the bouncing ball.

Bubble prints are like fingerprints, except made with bubbles. You can make bubble prints and learn about how bubbles are shaped and how pigments combine to make different colors.

Have you ever wanted to make your own pH paper test strips? This is an easy project that you can complete in a few minutes. Here's a video that guides you through the steps of making pH paper test strips yourself.

You know you can put out a candle flame by pouring water on it. In this science magic trick, the candle will go out when you pour 'air' onto it.

Use dry ice to carbonate fruit. The fruit will be filled with tingly carbon dioxide bubbles, like a soda. The fizzy fruit is great to eat on its own or it can be used in recipes.

You can use chalk and alcohol to perfom chromatography to separate the pigments in food colorings or inks. After you've finished making your chromatogram, you'll have colored chalk.

Make delicate, colorful crystals! This is a great classic crystal-growing project. You use charcoal briquettes (or other porous materials), ammonia, salt, bluing, and food coloring to grow a sort of crystal garden.

Use pennies, nails, and a few simple household ingredients to explore some of the interesting properties of metals. Clean the pennies chemically, make verdigris, and plate the nails with copper.

Analyze the dyes used in your favorite candies with paper chromatography using a coffee filter, colored candies, and a salt solution.

Here's a quick and easy science project you can do: make a cloud inside a bottle. This simple project uses water vapor and smoke from a match to help form a cloud.

This is cool colored chalk, for sidewalks or anywhere! Washes off with water, too.

It's easy to make your own colored flowers, especially carnations and daisies, but there are a couple of tricks that help ensure great results. Here's how you do it.

Copper sulfate crystals are among the easiest and most beautiful crystals that you can grow. The brilliant blue crystals can be grown relatively quickly and can become quite large. Here's how you can grow copper sulfate crystals yourself.

Natural geodes are hollow rock formations that contain deposits of crystals. Assuming you don't have a geological timeframe to obtain a geode, it's easy to make your own crystal geode using plaster of paris, alum, and food coloring.

Grow a cupful of epsom salt crystal needles in your refrigerator. It's quick, easy, and safe.

Make a liquid layers density column with as many as seven layers using common household liquids. This is an easy, fun and colorful science project that illustrates the concepts of density and miscibility.

Learn how to make blue or red ink that will disappear after exposure to air. Tips for restoring the color and an explanation of the acid-base chemistry of the reaction are also included.

Place a ketchup packet in a bottle of water and make it rise and fall at your command, as if by magic. Of course, the magic involves some basic science. Here's how to do the diving ketchup trick and how it works.

You can use duck tape to see an example of triboluminescence, the glow given off when some materials are subjected to mechanical stress or friction. The duck tape triboluminescence project is extremely easy and only take a few seconds to try.

Making a simulant is a form of chemistry, right? Here are instructions for making your own edible fake barf. Ick!

Most slime recipes are non-toxic, but there are only a few you can actually eat and none that taste as good as this one! Here's how to make edible slime.

Perform an experiment to observe the effects of acids, bases, and water on the rate of browning of cut apples or other produce.

You don't see air and might not think much of it is contained in a bottle, but air and the pressure it exerts can be very powerful. The egg in a bottle demonstration illustrates the concept of air pressure.

This recipe makes cool, non-toxic slime that appears to have a life of its own!

Most endothermic reactions contain toxic chemicals, but this citric acid and sodium bicarbonate reaction is safe and easy.

Epsom salt crystals are easy to grow and form quickly. Here's what you need to know to make your own magnesium sulfate crystals.

Exothermic chemical reactions produce heat. In this reaction vinegar is used to remove the protective coating from steel wool, allowing it to rust. When the iron combines with oxygen, heat is released.

This results in a non-toxic, realistic stage blood.

These instructions will result in either clear or amber glass, depending on the cooking time used.

Do you love the look of neon signs, but want an inexpensive alternative that you can customize to say whatever you want? You can make a fake neon sign using fluorescence to make inexpensive common materials glow.

This is a gooey, gross variation of the traditional slime recipe, great for Halloween and other occasions requiring snot.

You can make fake snow using a common polymer. The fake snow is non-toxic, feels cool to the touch, and looks similar to the real thing.

Make a non-toxic fizzy Mad Scientist potion using ingredients from your kitchen. The potion looks evil, but it is safe enough to drink.

Make your own version of Floam, a type of slime that contains polystyrene beads so that you can mold it into shapes.

Red cabbage juice contains a natural pH indicator that changes color from purple to green under basic (alkaline) conditions. You can use this reaction to make a fried green egg.

If you have fruit, a couple of nails, and wire then you can generate electricity to turn on a light bulb. Learn how to make a fruit battery. It's fun, safe, and easy.

Measure the ripening of fruit from exposure to the plant hormone ethylene by testing starch levels with an iodine solution. This easy experiment can be performed on several types of fruit, such as apples, pears, and bananas.

Feeling crafty? If you can make Jello, then you can make your own gel air fresheners. It's easy and fun. You can choose your own scents and colors. For holiday fun, consider layering different colored gels or using seasonal fragrances (e.g., pine or cinnamon for Christmas).

Colorful gelatin shapes can be used to make jewelry, mobiles, decorations, and more!

Geodes are rocks that contain crystals. Normally, millions of years are required for flowing water and minerals to deposit crystals, but you can make your own 'geode' in only a few days. Grow blue copper sulfate crystals inside an egg shell to make your own geode.

Alum crystals are among the quickest, easiest, and most reliable crystals you can grow. Did you know you can make them glow in the dark by adding a common household ingredient to the crystal growing solution?

It's very easy to make a glow in the dark crystal geode. The rock is a natural mineral (eggshell). You can use one of several common household chemicals to grow the crystals. The glow comes from phosphorescent paint, which you can get from a craft store.

Learn how to make ice cubes that will glow in the dark when exposed to a black light. The glowing ice is easy to make and safe to use in drinks.

It's easy to make a mentos and soda eruption glow. All you need to do is use tonic water or diet tonic water instead of the usual diet soda and shine a black light on the fountain.

You can make a glow in the dark pumpkin with a jack-o-lantern face using a common non-toxic chemical. The jack-o-lantern doesn't require carving or fire, shines in rain or wind, and lasts as long as your pumpkin. Plus, the glowing pumpkin looks really spooky!

What is better than regular slime? Slime that glows in the dark, of course! This is an easy and fun project that is suitable for kids.

Learn how to make a glow-in-the-dark crystal snowflake or other glowing holiday ornament. This is a safe and easy project that's great for kids and kids-at-heart. The crystal decorations are light-weight and inexpensive to make.

Bubbles are already awesome, but glowing bubbles are even better. It is easy and safe to make bubbles glow, plus it doesn't require any hard-to-find materials. Here is what you do.

This glowing crystal ball is easy to make, plus the light is sealed so you can float the glowing crystal ball in a punch bowl or use it as a safe decoration anywhere you might like glowing ice.

It's incredibly easy to make Jell-O or other gelatin glow under a black light. Here's what you do.

It's really easy to make glowing water that you can use as glowing water or as a glowing ingredient in other water-based projects.

Make squishy non-toxic goo that hardens in your hands when you squeeze it, but flows like a liquid when you pour it.

This is sort of like slime, but drier and very non-toxic if left uncolored.

Your carved pumpkin or Halloween jack o lantern doesn't have to rot or mold before Halloween! Here is how to preserve a jack o lantern so that it will last for weeks instead of days.

Some commercial hand sanitizers contain ingredients as scary as the germs they protect you from, so why not make your own hand sanitizer from ingredients you select? This is an excellent project for kids as well as adults, since the project can be expanded to include a discussion about hygiene and disinfection.

Make a tasty treat and learn about freezing point depression, too! All you need are some basic ingredients and two ziploc baggies. It's easy, fun, and educational.

These are quick and easy instructions for making non-toxic invisible ink using baking soda (sodium bicarbonate).

The writing for this invisible ink technique is done using corn starch. An iodine solution is used to reveal the message.

Lemon juice is acidic and weakens paper. When paper is heated, the remaining acid turns the writing brown before discoloring the paper.

Microwave a bar of Ivory soap and watch it expand to over six times its original size. The foam trick is good clean fun, plus it can be used to demonstrate Charles' Law, physical change, and foam formation.

The elephant toothpaste demo produces a growing column of foam that looks like what you would get if an elephant squashed a giant tube of toothpaste. Here's a kid-friendly version of this classic chemistry demonstration.

Lava lamps are interesting and cool. Have you ever wanted to make your own lava lamp? Lava lamps that you buy use high heat and toxic chemicals, but you can make a lava lamp at home using safe kitchen ingredients. Here's how.

If you add food coloring to milk, not a whole lot happens, but it only takes one simple ingredient to turn the milk into a spinning color wheel. Here is what you do.

Candies and diet soda together can make a chemical 'volcano' with an eruption several feet high. If the normal baking soda volcano is too tame for you, give this project a try.

This recipe makes a non-sticky sort of 'rubber' or gelatinous slime.

There are several ways you can make homemade clay for modeling, making ornaments, and for other projects and crafts. Here are several clay recipes, including a refrigerator clay, a clay you bake to harden, one you coat for a glossy finish, and one that works up and stays pliable much like store-bought modeling clay.

This is the classic, simple flour paste.

Learn how to make Oobleck, a type of slime that has properties of both liquids and solids.

Most plants contain several pigment molecules, so experiment with different leaves to see the wide range of pigments.

The pepper and water science trick is one of the easiest magic tricks you can perform. Here's how to do the trick and an explanation of how it works.

Perfume is a classic gift, but it's even better if it is a scent that you made yourself, especially if you package it in a beautiful bottle. Perfume you make yourself is free from synthetic chemicals and is fully customized to your personal taste. Here's how to make your own perfume.

Plastics are generally produced from petroleum, but they can come from other sources as well! All that is really required is the ability to join molecules containing carbon and hydrogen together, which you do whenever you curdle milk.

You can make pH indicator from poinsettia flowers, then use the indicator to make your own pH paper test strips.

A potato can function as an electrochemical cell or battery. It's fun to use a potato to power an LCD clock.

Make a rainbow in a glass using colored sugar solutions with different densities. This project is very easy and safe enough to drink.

Make beautiful paper from recycled scraps of just about any paper project you can find. Learn how to add decorative items to your paper and prepare it for writing or stamping. This is a fun craft that teaches about recycling while making a useful handmade product.

Learn how to make your own pH indicator test strips using red cabbage. This is a fun, safe, and easy chemistry project that you can do at home.

Rock candy is candy made by crystallizing sugar. You can grow sugar crystals yourself, plus add color and flavor to make rock candy that you can eat.

You can make a hard boiled egg bounce like a rubber ball and cause chicken bones to become soft and rubbery. All you need is a common kitchen ingredient.

Salt and vinegar crystals are easy-to-grow non-toxic crystals that you can grow in a rainbow of colors. This crystal growing project is especially good for kids or beginners looking for quick and easy crystals.

You can make a salt crystal geode in any color of the rainbow. The geode showcases the beautiful cubic structure of sodium chloride or table salt.

You can create a pattern resembling tie-dye using colored Sharpie pens and rubbing alcohol. It's a fun and educational project that is great for kids.

There are lots of recipes for slime. Since most recipes are easy, look for one using ingredients you have on hand.

You can make a smoke ring cannon that shoots smoke rings in the air or even in water. A smoke ring cannon is a simple science project that uses easy-to-find household materials to illustrate fluid vortex formation in a fun way.

Here is a collection of several quick and easy recipes for ice cream you can make using snow.

Soap slime is an easy-to-make type of slime that is fun to play with and makes clean-up fun. Here's how you make it.

Stink bombs smell terrible, but they are also fun. Here are instructions for how to use everyday materials to make your own stink bombs.

Sugar and string Easter egg ornaments are a fun family craft idea, plus you can include a lot of science in this project. You can make smaller hollow string ornaments to hang or put in baskets or you can make a large crystal egg to use as an Easter basket.

You can cool water below its stated freezing point and then crystallize it into ice on command. This is known as supercooling. These are step-by-step instructions for supercooling water at home.

It's easy to grow your own table salt or sodium chloride crystals. All it takes is salt and boiling water. One method even yields crystals within a few hours. Here's what you need to know.

Black lights emit ultraviolet radiation, giving certain materials an eerie glow. Which materials? You can do a little experimental research or you can check out this list!

Wave tanks use liquids with two different densities that won't mix together. Here's an easy, non-toxic method.

Here's how to make a safe and easy chemical volcano using two common inexpensive household ingredients.