How might your project help improve our understanding or address a problem in an area of STEM not covered by the other challenges?

This challenge is open to any project topic! As you brainstorm, if none of the other challenges inspire you, check out this more general list of questions to get you thinking about your project, inspire some research, and help you decide what question or problem you might want to investigate.

Brainstorming project ideas:

Follow Your Curiosity

• What topics or activities do you love learning about, even outside of school?
• What makes you wonder why or how it works?
• How is STEM part of an interest, hobby, or talent you have?
• How could materials be used in a new or different way? (*Make sure you always put safety first! Have adult supervision and do research before combining materials that could possibly react with one another, or using them in way they aren’t normally used.)
• If money and resources didn’t matter, what’s the coolest STEM idea you’d want to try?

Using Ingenuity (Creativity + Problem-Solving)

• Is there a small problem in your daily life you could design a solution for?
• How can you improve an existing tool, app, or system to make it easier or more fun to use?
• What’s something people around you often find annoying or difficult—could you fix it with science or engineering?
• How could you design a simple experiment to answer a “random” question you’ve always had?
• How could you test the science behind a myth, “life hack,” or common belief?

General topics that may fall under this Challenge

• Sports
  • How could you design new equipment or a tool to improve performance or reduce injury in a sport?
  • How does a sport impact memory, test scores, ageing, or another skill (e.g. balance, playing chess, dance, juggling, playing music, etc.)
  • What is something new we could learn from looking sport results and statistics?
• Music
  • How does music impact people (e.g. during or after an activity, different times of day, their mood, etc.)
  • What instrument interests you the most and how could it be changed or improved?
  • How does sound and music work physically? How could you explore sound waves, speakers, percussion, etc. to discover something new?
• Art
  • What is the STEM behind colour, design, painting, art restoration, aesthetics, etc.?
  • How could you innovate a new art material or process?
• Pets
  • How could we improve pet health, safety, care, enrichment, etc.?
  • What would a new pet product or toy look like? How would it be different than what already exists?
  • Pet preferences for toys, colours, products, etc. (*Make sure you have a large enough sample size for these projects – testing on 1-3 pets isn’t enough to get a reliable result. Learn more about picking the right sample size here.)
• Dance
  • How do different dance styles affect the dancers’ bodies (e.g. strength, flexibility, health, breathing, etc.)?
  • What technology could be incorporated into dance to make it more impactful to audiences, accessible to dancers with different abilities, etc.?
• Math
  • What mathematical models could be used in a new way?
  • What is the physics behind the way vehicles, animals, people, water, etc. move? Could these be improved or better understood?
  • How could banking, insurance or statistics be improved or used in a new way?
• Language
  • How could you map how Gen Z slang originated and spread? How does slang form and how is it influenced?
  • How could you test for physical or mental differences in people who are bilingual or multilingual?
  • What sounds or concepts in certain languages are difficult or impossible to say in other languages?
• Behaviour
  • How is behaviour impacted by different activities?
  • How do different environmental stimuli (e.g., light, noise, smells, etc.) impact behaviour?
• Product design – Designing a product that doesn’t fit under other challenges

Remember

Start by picking a topic or idea that sparks your curiosity. Then think about whether you could discover (test an idea through an experiment, research or survey) or innovate (design a new solution) around that problem. Learn more about the difference between Discovery and Innovation projects here.