“Fast and Easy Science Projects!” It sounds like an infomercial on late night television. What it is, however, is the desire of every mom who has faced the looming deadline of a science fair.

Most science projects aren’t fast, and if they’re too easy, the teacher won’t accept them. Kids have great ideas, but most of the time they aren’t appropriate. They either won’t work, are too expensive, take months to do, require materials from outer space, or they don’t follow the scientific method. So it’s up to the parent to try and find a science project.

One year one of my boys decided that for his science project, he wanted to test which metal conducted heat the best. The teacher loved the idea. And, frankly, so did I, until we tried to find five samples of different metals. Talk about expensive! We finally found a metallurgist who was able to help us. We developed a testing method that involved wax and our stove. The project worked, but our stove still has wax scars ten years later…

The science projects guides in 24 Hour Science Projects aren’t like that. The project guides were developed from experiments that were easy, were fast, that worked, that didn’t break the bank, and that the teacher liked. Try them out. We promise – all five of the guides really are for fast and easy science projects.

For many years, no matter how hard we tried, every time we came up with a science project idea, it was rejected. The teacher thought it was too easy or too hard, it didn’t follow the scientific method or our sample wasn’t big enough. The science project idea that we thought was terrific was a failure before it was even done.

So we’d visit the library, and discover that every science project idea in the books was either too hard or too easy, needed supplies that had to be ordered from Outer Mongolia, or was on a topic that didn’t interest our boys. To make matters worse, most of the science project books were full of demonstrations, and our school science fair demanded experiments. The internet wasn’t much better. Whose idea was it to require a child to do a science project anyhow?!

Finally, one year we hit on a science project idea that worked. We could find the supplies, we could get the science experiment to work, we could graph the results and find lots of research material. Best of all, our teacher though that it was a great science project idea, too! I can’t remember if we won at the science fair; just being able to find a project that was approved on the first try made it a winner in my book.

The following year, with a bit of experience (and confidence!) under our belts, it was easier to come up with a science project idea. We felt like rocket scientists when our project idea was accepted once again on the first submission!

We know that we’re not the only family that has a hard time finding a viable science project idea. Since we’ve done it all before, we decided to take our best science project ideas and make them available to others. We chose five projects and made them into a package of science project guides that we sell online at www.24hourscienceprojects.com. Each science project idea has step by step instructions, preformatted charts and graphs, reference helps, and easy to find supplies.

We’ve been in your shoes – in fact, we’re still in them, because our boys still have to come up with a yearly science project idea. You can take a look at our project guides at www.24hourscienceprojects.com. Our projects may mean that you won’t have to be a rocket scientist to come up with a great science project idea!