Ethan's Science Fair Project

It is that time of the year again.  The time of year I don't like.  It's time for the Science Fair.  I saw a Facebook post on a science fair project that was titled "Why everyone hates the science fair," or something like that.  I really want one of my kids to do that one!

Anyway, since Ethan is in honors science, he is required to do a project.  We didn't want to wait until the last minute, and they only gave him 2 weeks to do it, so he got started at once.  He wanted to do an experiment to see if facial expressions influence what someone smells.

Ethan spent one day doing research on his topic and found that there is a lot of information about facial expressions but not how they affect what you perceive you are smelling.  He spent another day doing the data sheet he would fill out.  He spent another day taking picture of what he was going to look like.  And then he asked me if I would go around with him while he asked our neighbors to sniff for him.  Ethan gave me very strict instructions that I wasn't to talk or do anything but write down their responses.  If I said or did anything, he was going to get "mad at you!"  I didn't get in trouble once so I was proud of myself.

My mom gave us 3 canisters and Ethan put a different dot on the top of each one.  He then filled them ALL with WATER, closed them and we took off for the neighborhood.

Ethan's hypothesis was that he could get people to think that the red one smelled bad by making a horrible face as he handed the canister to them.  He also thought he could make someone think the blue dot canister smelled good because he would smile at them while he handed it to them.  And the yellow one wouldn't smell at all because he wouldn't make a face.

 We first went to 3 houses where the ADULT in the house agreed to sniff the contents of the canisters.

First the red dot canister:

 Then the blue dot canister:

 Then the yellow dot canister:

All three adults didn't smell anything.  All three adults were concerned at the end that something was wrong with their nose.  It was pretty funny.

Then we went to 7 kids (ranging in age from 8-14).  They were all over the place.  One kids said all three smelled "like my cat" and that was a good smell to him.  One thought they didn't smell at all.  But they were all over the place.  I thought it was very interesting.

The adults thought something was wrong because they couldn't smell anything.  And the kids thought they smelled something.

Now Ethan has to do his board and he will turn in it next week.  I asked if he wanted to use the vinyl cutter to cut out lettering and he looked at me like I was insane.  He said, "I'm going to type it up and print it out."  Okay.  I guess doing boards has changed since I was a kid and we had to measure it all out so the lines would be even and the letters would be spaced just right.

It was a fun project.

Now Courtney has to figure out what she wants to do and we get to start it all over again.  Yipee!!