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Our school requires science fair for all of our students. I challenged a very bright student to basically see if she could simulate a carbon sink in the ocean--- since having to discover this is really challenging. I honestly do not know where to start (I am not sure what I was thinking). Does anyone have ANY ideas on how I could help her simulate the carbon cycle maybe and figure out a way to test it. Any ideas at all?? Thanks in advance for any advice or help.

Hi Shannon, Try this ongoing thread in Physical Science: http://learningcenter.nsta.org/discuss/default.aspx?tid=qlX3NFHMLmM_E or go to the Physical Science Forum and scroll down to the Science Fair thread

Shannon, That sounds like a real challenge! It will be close to impossible to create something where you can "see" the carbon, but you might be able to create a microcosm (or perhaps several) that have carbon dioxide cycling. Perhaps have one that have plants, animals (most likely insects), and a small body of water. And then have one with no plants. Then one with no animals, etc. Then she could compare what they look like after a given amount of time. And perhaps you could even find some kind of CO2 detector to measure the amount of CO2 in each. These are all just ideas off the top of my head so I can't say how well any of them would work or how easy they would be to do, but if she could create something that balances, perhaps? Also, this may help. It's more about students designing their own experiments, but this class is working on carbon cycling so you might be able to glean a little from what they say: http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Carbon-Cycling-Create-Your-Own-Biology-Lab-6316349/ Good luck!

Content in this collection includes ideas on preparing for a science fair, a virtual science fair lesson, and resources for creating a project background research plan. http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_Group_CurrikiMonthlyThematicCollections/ScienceFairs2013?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Curriki%20Content&utm_content=Curriki+newsletter+-+March+2013

Could you do something with probe ware where you use a closed environment and have varying amounts of CO2 and see what happens to the pH of water in the environment. Might not want to leave the CO2 probe in the container the whole time because they use CO2 to measure I believe. You could also just leave the water in a closed environment and measure initial and final CO2 levels in the environment over a given amount of time. Just brainstorming.