Hello.
My name is Bruce Doran.
I'm one of the scientists that works here
at Science North.
And this video is to help you, help students,
create a great science fair project.
Really, the whole point of a science fair
is to help students develop
the skills and the tools
in order to conduct experiments,
make observations,
do their own research,
also, problem-solving skills
and also communicate their findings
to their peers and also to you.
Science fair is an opportunity for anybody,
any student of any age,
to participate.
But it's a great opportunity for grade 7 and up,
to really learn these skills that they have learned in school
and then share them with others.
When students are doing a research project,
or a science fair project,
we want these projects to be innovative, original,
not something that's been done
in the past.
We want projects to be repeatable
so that we have measurable, repeatable units
that we can then look at,
something that will add to science.
But, honestly, sometimes with some of your students,
they may not have ideas on what to do
so maybe doing a project that's already been done in the past
but just kind of going beyond
the scope of the original project
or adding to something, a new spin to that project,
that's also acceptable.
My recommendation to you, the teachers,
is to work with the students
on something they're passionate about.
You get a lot of times students coming up to you
and they say, "I don't know what to do."
I had one student who was really passionate
about basketball
so what we did is really started looking at a project
where the student looked at the bounce-ability
of different types of balls.
So it doesn't have to be a glamourous project
or something that's really difficult to do.
Something they're passionate about,
you'd be surprised at how far students will go with that.
Now, with any project, they need to follow
the scientific method.
There needs to be hypothesis,
there needs to be repeated measurements,
the experiment needs to be repeatable
and they'd be able to also test their hypothesis
and whether or not their hypothesis came out true or not.
Now, there is nothing wrong if the student's hypothesis
was actually false.
We learned a lot from science when something doesn't work out
and goes against hypothesis
so don't worry if they come out with a result that's different
than what you and the students expected.
Now, we need to be aware,
and students need to be aware of
the rules and code of ethics
when it comes to science fair projects.
So there are rules dealing with very dangerous chemicals
and also rules dealing with animals and humans.
Now, it doesn't mean that these students
are not allowed to use animals or some of their classmates
but there are specific rules that need to be followed.
So my recommendation,
whenever you're dealing with animals with backbones,
or human as subjects
as part of a science fair project,
ask the Youth Science Canada
to really see what the rules and regulations
when it comes to them.
Also there may be some projects
that you might require a professional.
So if a student comes up to you and wants to do a project
on bacteria or something with volatile chemicals,
obviously it's not something they can just do
in their kitchen or even in school,
so you might have to reach out to different professionals
that might have those tools
in order to do specific projects.
Now, students might be very eager to go on
past just your little, you know,
uh, science fair competition in your school.
They might want to go regional's
or Canada wide science fair project,
so in order to do that,
they need to really stand out from the crowd,
they really need to stand out
from the other groups that are there
and they need to have really good presentation skills.
They need to be energetic.
Their results and everything they're displaying
needs to be clean, well typed,
the data needs to be clear, concise
and they need to be able to interpret their data.
So it's not just the science
but also how they present their science
will give them a leg up on those larger science fairs.
Um, when you're representing results,
or when they're representing results,
there are many different ways of doing that.
Obviously, we do need to know different representations
like changes over time.
They need to understand
the dependent and independent variables
but a lot of times
we see these graphs that are just bar graphs.
There are many different types of graphs.
There are pie charts
and other types of graphs that are out there.
So examine that.
Examine what kind of methods or different methods
they can represent their data,
because, again, it will look a lot different
than many of the other projects that are presented right now.
Now, keep in mind that
the science fair project does not have to be perfect.
These students are learning
how to do a science fair project.
They're learning how to gather data and to communicate
and it's really what's important about
the whole aspect of science fair projects
is really apply what they learned.
So enjoy and have fun doing science fair projects
with your students.