Incorporating research activities at the secondary-school level is an effective method to teach science; however, students and teachers may feel intimidated when trying to identify a suitable research topic. Ideas may be obtained from short articles in periodicals or newspapers to allow students to design their own experiments and interpret data. To illustrate how high-school research projects can be developed from such sources and accomplished with simple techniques and tools, a student-directed project inspired by historical metal-casting methods is described. References to key steps in the process of scientific inquiry are included to demonstrate how simple ideas can yield research questions.