In high school chemistry, I was given the option to either take the final exam, or do a project involving experimentation. I built a potato gun and tested diff

In high school chemistry, I was given the option to either take the final exam, or do a project involving experimentation. I built a potato gun and tested different fuels. It wasn't very scientifically rigorous (hard to measure how much fuel went into the firing chamber, distance measurements were sloppy, and we didn't take the weight of individual potato projectiles into account). But it was incredibly fun, and the report I produced earned me an A. That was probably the best "scientific" experience I had in all my years of schooling including college. Having to think about all the different variables really helped me grok the scientific process. We thought up ways that we could start to control things like fuel load and projectile weight and just generally had a blast.