Science Fair Projects - Pedometer

Sports experiments that will get you moving... enjoy your jogging and speed walking while doing your science fair projects!

Right now the United States is facing an obesity epidemic. One proposed solution to this problem is to encourage people of all ages to move more. In order to help scientists understand the problem of American inactivity you can complete science fair projects - pedometer experiments. These experiments will look at how much people in your life are moving around.

The first science fair projects - pedometer experiments that you can complete will look at how much you move in a typical day, week or month. For this experiment you will need a pedometer. To get used to wearing the pedometer you can try charting how far you walk during a typical school day. If you are up for a challenge, chart how much you walk during a full week or a full month.

The next science fair projects - pedometer experiments that you can complete will explore the different activity levels of boys and girls in your class. For this experiment you will need several volunteers and enough pedometers to go around. Split your test groups into a boys group and a girls group. Have each team wear their pedometers for a week. At the end of the week chart their mileage and compare the groups. Who were more active? Does this support or not support your assumptions about the activity levels of boys compared to those of girls?

The third physics science fair projects that you can complete using pedometers, is to examine how pedometers work. You will need to look at the force created by a foot step, as well as how mileage is calculated using the stride length of the wearer. After learning how a pedometer works, you can test how accurate they are. In this experiment have the test subject walk a mile. Did the pedometer reading end up at 1 mile? Why or why not?

The fourth free 7th grade science fair projects that you can complete using pedometers will look at the difference in mileage accumulated during a game of basketball compared to a game of soccer. For this experiment you will need each team member to wear a pedometer. At the end of the game you will determine the average mileage for each player and then compare that to the other sport. Which sport requires a further distance to be traveled?

The final experiment that you can complete will look at the difference between activity levels of adults and kids. In this experiment you will need a group of adults and a group of kids to participate. Each group will wear a pedometer for a week. You will instruct each group to do what they normally do. At the end of the week you will calculate the average mileage for the adult group and compare that to the average mileage for the kid group. Who walks more kids or adults?