What kind of project work would be educational and interesting to teenagers(15-16)?

The project should fall under the category Biology. Kindly be specific.What kind of project work would be educational and interesting to teenagers(15-16)?
When warm weather settles in, take them on a nature hike. Most teens will think this is cheesy, but the competition will soon settle in.





Play a seeking game. Create a list of items, with points attached, of things that are around their school. List the scientific name (ones studied in class and some hard one for bonus pts)...deducting points if they have to ask about their common name.





Items can included leaves, feathers, rocks, etc. Make it a week long project where kids can work in teams.





My 10th grade Bio teacher did this...and even though we moaned at first at how childish the game was...we all aced our test the following week, and had a good competition.





(We got some sort of reward, but I forget what it was.)What kind of project work would be educational and interesting to teenagers(15-16)?
You could do a study on the effects of sleep deprivation and hours of video game playings affect on the body. Test their cognitive skills with 10 questions from a random homework book and grade them several times a day to see if their mental faculties are declining. Measure heart rate, blood pressure.





Or, alternately, the effects of certain foods kids love to eat on the body versus healthy food parents recommend. For several weeks one eats nothing but cheetoes, hamburgers, cake, pizza and so forth. The control group eats green beans, chicken, spinach, and so forth. Weigh them, note any sleep peculiarities, document their overall mood, etc.
Carnivorous plants would be a good idea - firstly there would be adaptations to harsh condititions in evlutionary terms - you could also do enzymes by looking at nepenthes - also you could look at plant movement with sundews and venus-fly traps - you could also look at different trap methods and how they work - tissue culture maybe another idea. - for more information look up: http://www.carnivorousplants.org http://www.geocities.com/cambridgecarniv鈥?/a> http://www.thecps.org.uk
If your discussing cell biology at all, play the enzyme game.





Give each student a role of an enzyme: assign them tasks to turn A-%26gt;B or B-%26gt;C, and so on. Let them get up and move around, but not to talk to anyone. Then sends sheets of paper around the room as substrates, like glucose, or a fatty acid (start off with sheets just labeled A for instance). Let them wander around, do their little enzyme jobs (as simple as crossing out A and writing B). After a breif amount of time, see what types of products you made from your substrates, in what ratio, etc.





Next, throw a kink in things. Instead of just turning A-%26gt;B, have ';A'; hold onto the paper for a time in the process, and see how that effects enzyme kinetics. Then try having students go arm in arm around the room to see how multiple functional sites on an enzyme can increase overall activity.





This can get as deep as you want, and can help students understand how things like temperature and concentration can effect the huge world that is our cells