Reality Check

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“Reality Checks” are devotional outlines for outdoor preachers and teachers that have worked well on Creation Safaris, in line with our motto Escape to Reality.  These lessons should be thought out with additional Scriptures, explanations, illustrations, and personal testimonies to make them your own.  Above all, handle with prayer.
– David F. Coppedge

SCIENCE PROJECT BRAINSTORMER

Theme:  Need an idea for a science project for your student or class?  Here is a brainstorm list of creation-oriented science project ideas to explore creation and test the validity of the theory of evolution.
  1. Paleontology:  Try to fossilize a leaf in a short time.  Study the subject of taphonomy and experiment with dissolved lime, heat, pressure, and other factors.
  2. Probability:  Shuffle a box of Scrabble letters and draw them at random; count how many meaningful sequences form by chance.  See Evolution: Possible or Impossible?, Ch. 2.
  3. Planetary science:  Study the rings of Jupiter, which are composed of smoke-size particles.  How long could the moons Metis and Adrastea supply material to keep the rings going, when forces of erosion would destroy them in a few thousand years or less?
  4. Planetary science:  Help NASA classify Martian craters.
  5. SETI: “SETI at home” allows you to look for life in outer space on your PC.  http://planetary.org.
  6. History of science:  recreate some of the experiments of Robert Boyle with a vacuum pump, as an exercise in living history.  Comment on his Christian motivations for doing science. See: Robert Boyle from The World’s Greatest Creation Scientists and read his biography by John Hudson Tiner.  (Can also use Joule, Faraday, Galileo and others).
  7. Information theory:  Give computer code some random mutations and see if it runs better, or make random letter changes in an essay and see if it makes better sense.
  8. Biomimetics: invent something based on nature.  For example, Velcro was invented by someone observing how weed seeds stick to clothing.
  9. Grade your school’s science textbooks based on their accuracy of describing evolution: see the appendix of the book Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells.
  10. Botany:  Study the sensitivity and reaction times of the Venus Flytrap carnivorous plant.
  11. Geology:  See if you can create horizontal strata with sand and gravel of different sizes under water flowing at an angle in a flume. See the work of Guy Berthault.
  12. Geology:  Experiment with liquefaction and its ability to generate horizontal strata. (See Walter Brown’s discussion of this: click on Liquefaction).
  13. Genomics: Build a DNA model, and calculate the probability of getting a gene or sequence of right-handed components.  See Evolution: Possible or Impossible?
  14. Information theory and mineralogy:  Compare and contrast crystals (order without information) to books (information without order).
  15. Distributed intelligence:  Observe ants’ ability to regroup after an accident (see 11/14/2000 entry in Creation-Evolution Headlines).
  16. Origin of life:  Test the viability of bacteria under ultraviolet light or assumed primitive-earth conditions.
  17. Ecology:  Study colors and designs in wildflowers and their effect on insect pollinators.
  18. Philosophy of science:  List how many cherished beliefs have been proven wrong in the previous year of Science News magazine.
  19. Education:  grade TV science reporting on evolution and the age of the earth, using Jonathan Wells’s book Icons of Evolution guidelines in the Appendix.
  20. Sociology:  Conduct a scientific poll of fellow students on their beliefs about evolution, intelligent design, whether creation should be taught, or whether arguments against evolution should be taught.