Our local science fair will be happening this February, and my children are excited.

How excited? It’s November, and today my 8 year old designed her own experiment, conducted her experiment, and documented her experiment. And reminded me several times that we need to buy the tri-fold board, so she can write it up properly.

Now this is her first year we’re expecting (not forcing, but anticipating) she’ll be doing the science fair as an actual participant. Last year she was interested in the experiments for entertainment’s sake (Mythbusters style), but didn’t have the stamina and interest in writing up her learnings and presenting them to others. Now, given what all she accomplished today, I think it is a fairly safe assumption that she’ll be up to completing the process this year.

She told me about her desired experiment: Will an ice cube melt faster in a cup of water, or a cup of water with food coloring?

We talked about variables she needed to control, including containers, temperature of water, amount of water, and size of ice cubes. We talked about what her procedural plan was, what parts should be laid out in advance (such as how many ice cubes), and what parts she might want to play by ear during Round 1 (how many drops of food coloring it took to get the color intensity that might affect the ice but wouldn’t inhibit her ability to make her observations, how often to be checking on the melting progress). We discussed her data collection tool, how it should be laid out, what it should collect, and how often. We discussed other tools she might need – specifically a timer, to keep her from getting distracted while playing with sister.

And then she went on to implement all of it. I only helped take a couple of pictures, and trouble shot with her when she wasn’t getting consistent initial temperatures for the two cups of water.

The procedure:

She realized she needed two or more sets of replicates, because once might be a fluke:

And then both her hypothesis and conclusion (because she wrote them on the same page, and I didn’t want to spoil it for you at the beginning):

Note that since she loves science experiments, this is likely only one of several experiments she could conduct before the Science Fair. So if you attend in February, don’t be surprised to see a different experiment on her tri-fold board 🙂

How about you? Do you have a hypothesis about how money works, and a procedure for your daily handling of money? Are you documenting your results, and analyzing potential variables you can control? Is this experiment known as life working for you?

If your hypotheses about how money works (or you don’t even have a hypothesis) is consistently being countered by the results you’re obtaining, maybe it’s time to iterate. Move on to the next experiment, time for a new hypothesis.