Sugar Science Fair Projects

Sugar science fair projects are very popular with students of all ages. In fact, they are popular with judges of all ages as well. Sugar is a food substance that attracts humans and animals alike. But have you every stopped to wonder why? The following sugary food experiments will try to help you get closer to answering this questions.

Age is a factor in determining whether people prefer sweet or savory flavors. This is a hypothesis that your sugar science fair projects can explore. To test this hypothesis you will need to find test subjects from a variety of age groups. You will then provide them with several food choices. The food choices will include both sweet and savory flavors. Did you find a correlation between age and a preference for sweets?

A person's sex influences whether they prefer sweet or savory foods. This is a variation on the above experiment. In this experiment the independent variable will be the test subject's sex and the dependent variable will be their preference for sweet or savory flavors. What statistical analysis tools can you use to find correlations between sex and food preferences?

A person's profession influences whether they prefer sweet or savory foods. This is an interesting variation on the above sugar science fair projects. You can use candy science fair projects to test this hypothesis. If you find a correlation between profession and a preference for sweets, explain it. What factors contribute to this correlation? For example, look at the accessibility of sweets or savory foods and the person's preferences.

All animals prefer sweet foods to savory foods in general. This is a very complex hypothesis that will require a lot of time and a lot of data to test. When you are analyzing your data you will want to look for an overall preference per animal species for sweet food. Individual preferences for savory foods may be observed, but these could just be anomalies.

We know that many animals prefer sweet foods, and in fact search for sweet foods to eat. But what about plants? Do they search for sugary foods as well? How would you set up an experiment to answer this question? What type of data would you need to collect?