Eli's Science Project

Yup. It's that magical year where we get to work for many many weeks on a project for the science fair!

What a season for this to happen too, with all we have going on. I honestly think (hope!) it was for the better...that it forced Eli to be more independent with it because of the decreased parental involvement in his academics this fall. He did come up with his idea all on his own, though his dad and aunt helped him fine tune the actual question he ended up with.

Eli wanted to see if deflating a football actually made it easier to catch. We ended up getting three identical (new) footballs and a ball pump/gauge so that he could throw each level of inflation 20 times to each subject and record their success rate. That worked out to 60 throws per person. (Eli threw every time and counted off the distance with his own steps.)

Several weeks were spent planning for how to perform his experiment to best get the amount of results he'd need to come to a conclusion. Eli ended up using 5 or 6 friends and 3 or 4 adults as test subjects. Due to the rain and our fall, getting all 10-ish people completed before the end of the project did prove to be a challenge. (We even did two of the kids one hour before Trick-or-Treating on Halloween!) When it came time to put it all together on his presentation board, Ruby and I were in the hospital and the boys were in the middle of a soccer tournament. But Eli rallied and worked really hard to get everything done. We've been so proud of his work ethic on it!

In the end, Eli had a great time and definitely learned a bunch. I know if he were to do the experiment again, he would change several things to help fine tune his results. Of course there were heads butted (mostly Lehr and Eli, but I'm only off of the hook because I was not there in person for most of the work), but all in all, I'd say the project was a success.

We all got to attend Eli's school tonight to see all of the projects. Eli was oh-so proud. And how cool that the timing lined up so that all five of us were there PLUS Eli's grandmother and great-grandmother!