Any suggestions for a good science fair project that is NOT a demonstration or a consumer report/comparasion?

Try these sites. They should give you the help you need.

Most good science fair project subjects are simply something you are curious about or something that you have a question on. Once you develop your question, you develop a "hypothesis", which is a guess at what the answer to the question might be. Then, you design experiments to see if what you guessed is correct, or supported by the evidence or the results from the experiment. After you complete your experiment(s), you develop a conclusion. In the conclusion, you evaluate both your original hypothesis as well as your experiment technique and your experiment results. If your hypothesis is not supported by the experiment results, then you either can either change your hypothesis to fit the results, change your experiment techniques and continue to experiment, or use the conclusion to disprove your original hypothesis. A simple example question that I have always thought would make an interesting experiment: "Does colored water evaporate faster than clear water?" A possible experiment design would be to measure out the same amount of water into several containers that are the exact same shape and size. Since we are interested in testing different colors of water, it would be a good idea if the containers were clear glass. Add different colors of food coloring to each of the different water samples. You can use primary food colors, or you can mix different colors together to come up with your own colors. After you have prepared your samples, you will need to put them is a place where they all receive an equal amount of light, heat, and air flow. It might even be a good idea to rotate the samples so that the results aren't skewed by having one sample in a spot that is hotter or gets more light than the other samples. I suggest setting them in a window where they all get the same amount of sun light. You will need to check in the morning and in the evening to make sure that all the samples are getting the same amount of sun. After a week, evaluate the results to see what happened. I am going to guess (my hypothesis) that a water sample with a dark color will evaporate faster than a light or clear water sample. If you are slightly ADD like me, and don't want to have to wait for a week to see results, you might try doing something like this in the microwave and seeing which color boils fastest. But, that should only be done with parental supervision and guidance. If you decide to use this option, you can even turn it into a race to see which color wins. And if colors don't make a difference on which one boils fastest, then you can continue experimenting. Maybe different shapes of containers, or different materials for the containers will make a difference.

My granddaughter did one on fingerprints, and whether the same characteristics were genetic or not. It was interesting!

there is always growing plants under different lighting conditions