Science Activity: Hydraulic jump - example for finding research questions

Link to Hydraulic Jump - How to create research questions activity
Link to Hydraulic Jump - How to create research questions training video.

The ultimate activity and experience in any science class is for students to actually take on real research. This means finding a specific question about some phenomenon, designing and building experiments, collecting data and doing an analysis, and reaching some logical conclusion about the nature of the phenomenon and possible answer for the research question based on data, observations, and other evidence. Actually being a scientist, and potentially making an actual discovery!

Most may be wondering if this is ever possible at a high school level, with teenagers doing research in a school or at home with very limited equipment and supplies. It may be really surprising to find out the hundreds of possible original research questions and projects a student can find for everyday phenomena, and where she or he does not need any fancy equipment or laboratory to do the research.

This activity shows one approach to finding those specific research questions. It uses a hydraulic jump, which is what happens when a stream of water hits a hard surface - it flows smoothly outward in all directions, until at some special distance the water 'jumps' up and becomes turbulent flow. That's the circle you see in a sink of when you spill water onto a table top. There are features of the hydraulic jump that are not well understood yet since we don't fully understand turbulent flow of fluids. And that means, with a little creativity and asking a lot of questions, there are setups where a student could actually be doing research that one cannot find in the literature - it is real research, it is making an actual discovery in the field of fluid dynamics!

Check out this activity lesson plan and training video. The process is the important part. Take any bsaic but interesting everyday phenomenon, and literally have students play with it. Try to think of any and all parameters or quantities that could affect what you normally see...every one of those parameters or quantities you and students think of can become a research project. Think about how to set up a controlled experiment where one can test the actual effect that one parameter has on the phenomenon. That is research!