Sociology Science Projects (25 results)
Sociology is the scientific study of social interactions, at both small and large scales. Sociologists ask big questions, such as "How are societies maintained?" and "How do societies change?"
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If someone asks you to draw a picture of a doctor, lawyer, or engineer, what first pops into your mind? The race and gender of the person you imagine might be shaped by your personal life experiences, such as whether you have family members in those professions, or what representations of them you have seen on TV or online. What do you think will happen if you ask an artificial intelligence (AI) program to generate the picture instead? Will pictures generated by AI reflect the true real-world…
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Featured
Have you heard that garlic powder is supposed to inhibit the growth of bacteria? Which do you think would make a better disinfectant: a solution of garlic powder or a solution of bleach? This project shows you a straightforward way to compare the effectiveness of different disinfectants (or other antimicrobial agents), by measuring zones of inhibition on a culture plate.
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Although some of us may not like to admit it, everyone's afraid of something. Big dogs, thunderstorms, public speaking, heights: what are you most afraid of? Do you think grown-ups have the same fears as kids? How about first-graders and sixth-graders? Find out for yourself by doing this project.
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New
Many individuals who are blind or visually impaired use canes to navigate their surroundings, using their sense of touch to detect obstacles. What if you could create an electronic cane that emits an audible warning before coming into contact with an object? This project allows you to do just that by incorporating an ultrasonic distance sensor and a buzzer to alert the user of approaching obstacles. You can customize the cane by adding additional features or altering the design, such as using a…
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Do people treat someone differently based on his or her appearance? Specifically, how are their behaviors affected by the clothes a person wears? For instance, if somebody wears a formal suit, do you think others behave differently when interacting with that person compared to if he or she were wearing casual clothes, like blue jeans? In this science project, you will get to try and find out!
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Social media is all the buzz on the internet. What can we do with all the information generated by millions of people posting, tweeting, taking pictures, and chatting? How do companies convert it into profit? While you do not have the tools to analyze data from millions of social media posts by yourself, you will be able to analyze a scaled-down version. Follow the instructions in this project to try your hand at extracting data from a couple of social media sites and use it to create…
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What causes the most stress for teenagers? Is it school? family relationships? peer pressure? worries about the future? Design a survey to find out what contributes to teens' stress levels. Possible variations include: How do teenagers deal with stress? Are today's teens more or less stressed than their parents were as teenagers? Were the sources of stress the same for your parent's generation or different? (Idea from De Biasi, 2003)
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Artificial intelligence (AI) programs can now generate photorealistic pictures of people who do not exist in the real world. How can you tell if a picture is of a real person or a fake, AI-generated person? What features of the picture do people use to decide whether the face is real or AI-generated? In this project, you will explore these questions as you ask volunteers to look at both real and AI-generated pictures of human faces.
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Many websites ask you to answer "security questions," like "What is your mother's maiden name?," to recover your account if you ever forget your password or login ID. However, sometimes the answers to those questions are easy to find online. Does this pose a risk to the security of important accounts like email and online banking? Are people even aware that this information about them is available online? In this project, you will investigate how secure people think security questions are, and…
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How well do adults understand basic science concepts? This project is a good opportunity for you to test your own scientific understanding as you create a short test to assess knowledge of basic science concepts. Your test will have to brief (probably 10-15 questions, maximum) or you'll have a hard time getting a sufficient number of complete responses. With so few questions, you'll have to think carefully about exactly what comprises "basic science knowledge," and exactly how to word your…
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If you compare products made primarily for boys with products made primarily girls, you will probably notice differences in colors for the two groups. Why do you think this is? Is it the marketplace responding to gender-based color preferences? Do you think it's the other way around, and the products create gender-based color preferences? Design a survey study to find out if gender actually make a difference in color preferences. Here are some questions you might want to consider when…
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Tests, homework, taxes, speed limits, sports: there's always the possibility of cheating. Design a survey to investigate attitudes about cheating. Are some kinds of cheating worse than others? Are there times when it is OK to cheat, or is cheating always wrong? Do people who admit to cheating have the same attitudes as those who don't?
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The author of this project hypothesized that movies often disappoint readers because book-based movies tend to "dumb down" the works on which they are based (Fuhrman, 2002). Naturally, selective compression is necessary when telling a story as a movie, or no one would sit through it. (Hey, maybe there's an idea for a different experiment!) Selective compression is not necessarily the same, however, as simplification. There are ways to objectively measure the complexity of written language…
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