Science fairs are a quintessential educational activity, and the erupting baking soda volcano is the quintessential science fair project. Almost everyone remembers doing elementary school science fair projects at some point in their educational career. At this point in schooling, science tends to be a lot like magic in that it functions on entertainment value. The focus of scientific learning is not how things work in general, but how the remarkable and unusual can occur in a seemingly generic world. Maybe that’s why the volcano project is so popular—who knew that baking soda could cause something cool like an explosion?
Even as time has passed, it doesn’t seem like elementary school science fair projects have changed that much. Though things have evolved somewhat—the volcano project now manifests in the form of diet Pepsi and Mentos, no doubt influenced by a certain youtube video. When you think of school science projects in general, there are always classic projects like the egg drop or constructing your own boat based on the properties of physics. If you go online you can find lists of science fair project ideas with full explanations and instructions on how to implement them. This process is ironically unscientific because when students are relying on outside sources to do their projects for them, they’re not experimenting or investigating on their own, which is what science is all about.
Undoubtedly science fair projects have the potential to educate elementary school students about certain scientific properties and how they work while remaining fun and interactive. However, few will disagree that it’s difficult to find elementary school science fair projects that are truly innovative and original, and if you do it’s more likely than not that some parental intervention was involved. It’s one thing to help your child, but it’s another to do their whole science fair project and stick their name on it at the end.
All of this criticism might be warranted but then you might point out that after all, it’s just an elementary school science fair. There’s no need to get so worked up over kids having fun at school. Is it really necessary to force the true principles of scientific research on their shoulders at such a young age? Maybe not, or probably not, but the question remains—at what age should education become truly educational? It’s hard to say because students will all progress at different paces and elementary school science fair projects are a rite of passage that lack ample reason to be abolished, because who’s to say that not a single student actually learns from them? Nevertheless, the true educational value of certain established institutions remain worth investigating.
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