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Science Fairs
Create policies to ensure that your science-fair experiments are humane and respectful toward animals by prohibiting experiments on animals. For instance, in the national Intel Science and Engineering Fair, schools allowed children to expose mice to radiation, remove the ovaries of rats and then kill them, inject cancer cells into the eyes of mice, severely injure the spinal cords of cows, cause lesions to grow in rats' brains to bring on movement disorders, induce alcohol addiction in rats, and remove infant crows from their parents to observe the babies' reaction to social neglect.
As educators, we need to set a good example of the appropriate care and treatment of animals. We do not want to encourage students to inflict pain or death on animals or reward them for doing so. This will teach them callousness and insensitivity to the needs of others.
Ask your school to adopt official science fair guidelines in which children are expressly forbidden to do any experiment on animals.
Ideas to give students for humane experiments:
- Start a compost pile and study the bugs who live in it-without harming them.
- Study each other. Test your friends and family for the relationship between their senses of smell and taste-is it harder for them to tell the difference between pineapple juice and apple juice if their noses are plugged? How about if they're blindfolded? Test growth rates of hair and nails, or study heart rates, reaction times, and memory.
- Study school absenteeism. During which season are the most students staying home sick? Compare contagious versus noncontagious illnesses.
- Study mold. Vary foods and growing conditions-does mold grow faster in the cupboard, fridge, or freezer?
- Collect, grow, and study bacteria from garbage cans, doorknobs, under fingernails, or in human mouths. Compare bacteria in mouths before and after brushing teeth. Compare different growing conditions-how do temperature and humidity affect growth rate?
- Study urban birds: Find a spot where pigeons flock to eat and track them by recording their different colors. You can also watch for birds who are courting a mate and note their colors. Check out Project Pigeon Watch for more information at.
For more ideas, write to the United Federation of Teachers Humane Education Committee, 260 Park Ave. S., New York, NY 10010, or e-mail uftcomdep@aol.com. The committee offers a book with alternatives to science fair experiments that use animals.
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