Simple Science Fair Projects

Simple science fair projects are both easy and interesting. This may sound difficult, but coming up with simple science fair projects doesn't have to be all complex. There are many interesting experiments that are simple to do.

First you need to understand that this is truly a beginner's telescope. Although telescopes with tubes are nice, they are not necessary and adjustable focus can be useful but they are hard to build. With this telescope, there are no tubes or adjustable focus mechanisms. All that is needed a pair of lenses. You can find these by going to a hardware store or by using an old pair of eyeglasses.

Two lenses are needed to build the telescope. These are called the objective lens and the eyepiece lens. The objective lens should always be convex lens. These lenses are thicker in the middle and can be used for magnifying objects. When building the telescope, you want to find an objective lens that is weak - the weaker it is, the stronger your telescope will be. You can tell how weak it is by looking to see how thin it is in the centre.

The eyepiece lens can be either convex or concave. Using a convex eyepiece will turn everything you look at upside down. This is called a "Newtonian" telescope. Using a concave eyepiece will not turn everything upside down. This is called a "Galilean" telescope. A small, powerful lens makes for a good eyepiece lens.

To use the telescope, look towards a well-lighted object that is at a distance. Closing one eye, hold the eyepiece lens on the eye that is open. Then hold the objective lens in front of the eyepiece lens. Slowly bring the objective lens closer to the eyepiece lens until the object comes into focus.

It can sometimes be difficult to find the object so try looking at it from different spots. When you first find the object through the lenses, the edges of the object may be blurry. You can then move the objective lens closer and farther, depending on what makes the object become clearly visible. The lenses are now a telescope!

The simple explanation for this working is that if you put a lens against your eye, it will not increase an object's size but it may make things blurry. This is how eyeglasses work. But if you use a lens and move it away from your eye, everything will change size! If the lens is concave, everything viewed through the lens will get smaller and smaller. To make everything get bigger, using a convex lens will help this.

Most people don't know that you can create a telescope simply by using two different lenses. The most important thing to remember is that the objective lens must be convex. Once you have done it once, you can do it with anything including a magnifying glass lens or eyeglass lenses.

Now that you know the trick to designing simple science fair projects such as the one outlined above, now all you have to do is go do it!

Note: See the Disclaimer before starting this project.