The course project is an opportunity for you to deeply explore one (or several) of the techniques covered in class and apply them to a problem that is of interest to you.
You will plan your experiments, perform them and then analyze the data. Some more examples are given below, but it could be something like optimizing a favorite recipe or dessert, a hobby or sport, or it could be related to work from another course project or your graduate research.
You might be passionate about your hobby, for cooking, or your research area, etc, so coming up with a system to investigate shouldn't be a problem. However, some systems are too complex for the short time you have available, and you might have to cut back to something simpler. So below are some ideas that you can think about and modify, but please work on anything you are interested in, or anything you have ever wondered about.
Hover time of a paper helicopter (video)
Flight time or distance of a paper plane or model plane (video)
Yield of stovetop popcorn or microwave popcorn
Rise height of bread
Algae growth in an aquarium
Fuel efficiency (gas mileage) of a car
The perfect meringue from egg-whites
Taste of pancakes (average of 4 tasters)
Time taken to go down a ski slope
Factors related to seed germination and growth (e.g. does Miracle-Gro work?)
Home-made yogurt
Best-tasting mixed drink
Taste of preparing prepackaged foods
Foam produced when pouring (soft) drinks into a glass
Strength of wood glue bond
Stain removal from clothes
Shot distance of tabletop hockey puck
Factors related to paper towel absorbency, cost, softness, strength
Burst time of soap bubbles
Bounce height of tennis balls or golf balls
You might be fortunate that you have access to a lab for another course, or that one of your other courses overlaps in some way. You may even have an industrial partner from your co-op or current research area (grad students) with whom you can work. For example, a blown-film line, an extruder, a configurable heat-exchanger, investigating polymers. Try to work with these as much as possible.
Note that topics involving cooking and baking can be the most complex due to raw material variability and subjectivity of the outcome variable(s). However, if this is an area that you/your group is interested in, please try the following:
replace subjective measurements of taste with something more measurable, e.g. height of muffin, diameter of cookie, pH, or similar
use recipes that are based on weight; recipes and cookbooks that are based on volume for dry ingredients (cups and teaspoons) are inherently flawed and will introduce disturbances (error)
professional taste-testers are trained for months; rather than just a taste number between 0 and 10, break it down into components: acidity, sweetness, mouth feel (texture), crispiness, ''etc'', and add up the values to get a composite taste score
rather than just using taste as your response, also analyze the standard deviation of your taster's scores, to find the most robust, and pleasing recipe combination.