How to do a science fair project.
Before considering a science fair project,
the first question
you should ask yourself is, “Why
should I participate in a science fair?”
Science fairs are a wonderful opportunity
to go beyond the knowledge you learn in a textbook
through independent research.
A science fair
project allows you to explore any scientific
or engineering topic
that interests
you, study a subject in depth,
and come up with a hands on experiment
that investigates a question
you have about the world around you.
In this video,
I'll walk you through the complete process
from coming up with an idea,
creating a testable question,
conducting an experiment, recording your results,
interpreting them
to come up with a conclusion,
and finally preparing your presentation.
Before we get started,
I want to make it clear that
whenever you conduct any project, make sure you follow
all safety procedures and have adult supervision.
Additionally, the expectations for varying ages
will be different.
Although I will cover all the steps for a science fair
project in this video.
Note these average expectations by grade level:
younger elementary students
will explore a science topic
which reflects their current interests
and will share what they did
and what they learned in the process.
Older elementary students will explore a topic
more in-depth, creating a simple hypothesis
and going through
a simplified version of the scientific method.
Middle school students
should follow the scientific method.
However, their background,
research and future studies will be brief.
Finally,
high school
students would complete all portions of the process
I will cover in this video,
including in-depth research, conclusions
and future studies.
Ultimately, we want you to have fun exploring
and experimenting in a safe manner,
experiencing the joy that comes from discovering
something new.
Now let's explore how to do a science fair project.
Brainstorming an experiment Idea.
The first thing you need for a science fair
project is an idea,
and the key to a successful science fair project
begins with you.
What are your interests?
What questions do you have
about the things you like to do every day?
If you choose a project idea that interests you,
then you'll be more motivated to complete it.
Do it well, and most importantly, have fun.
Learning
a good science
fair project goes beyond the classic volcano model.
Unless you absolutely love studying volcanoes
because you are going to spend
lots of time researching,
experimenting and presenting,
make your topic something you are excited about.
You want your project
to stand out
as you share your newfound knowledge with others.
Now there are some topics which aren't a good choice
for a science fair project.
For example,
don't pick any topics
that include hard-to-measure data,
such as how a person's feelings
or memory
would be affected by certain foods, music
or other stimuli.
If you are comparing products, try to avoid results
that are open to personal opinions.
You want results that are measurable.
Don't choose a topic that requires dangerous materials
and please don't pick a topic that could cause injury
or pain to a living animal or human.
If you're considering an engineering design project,
look around at the designs
and technology around you
to see if there are ways to improve them.
Maybe you want to make something stronger,
faster or smaller for this type of project.
You're basically looking for ways
you can improve existing designs.
If you have a garden
and are constantly bothered by ants there.
What are some structural barriers you could test
that would keep them out?
If you like to play sports?
Perhaps you could test
what types of shoe treads would make you run faster.
A traditional science
question may come about like this.
Let's say you enjoy baking bread.
You have always been fascinated
to watch the loaves grow
as you stare through the oven window
and you love the soft, fluffy result.
This might start
you thinking about how yeast causes the bread to rise.
That's a great topic, for starters,
but you need to think about that subject a bit
in order to come up with a testable question.
So the next step involves doing some research
to gather background information on your topic.
Doing some background
research once you come up with an idea.
Gather library books
and internet sources on the subject.
If you know a professional in the area of your study,
they might be helpful to brainstorm ideas with too.
For older students,
it's important to learn
what research has already been completed
about your subject.
This way you can create an intelligent experiment,
particularly for high school students.
The background research,
called a literature
review, is an important part of your project,
taking up a good portion of your efforts.
So let's say that in reading
about yeast and its role in bread,
you learn that
yeast is a type of single celled fungus.
When yeast cells are activated
by placing them in warm water,
they feed on sugars and release carbon dioxide gas,
which forms bubbles
that become trapped in the dough, causing it to rise.
That background information
might cause you to ask some questions you might ask.
Do yeast
do better with warmer
or cooler oven temperatures while baking?
Are there certain
acidic materials
that affect yeast, such as lemon juice or vinegar?
How much sugar do yeast cells need?
What type of sugar works best
to get the most even rise?
Make sure to write
your research, discoveries
and all of these questions in your lab notebook.
That way
you can refer back to this information
when you need to.
This brings us to the next step in the process.
Choosing a testable question
and formatting it as a hypothesis.
In looking over your questions,
you should now try to identify
which of them can be tested.
Which questions might be easy to explore and measure.
You want to pick one thing to test in your project.
And don't forget.
Identify which one of the topics is interesting
to you.
A helpful way to format your questions is.
“How does something affect something?” that way
you are setting yourself up
to create an experiment to answer that question.
You might ask “How does tail length
affect a paper airplanes flight distance?” or,
“How does fertilizer
affect the growth of a tomato plant?”
In reviewing your background, reading,
and research on baking bread,
you might wonder
what type of sugar is best to produce
the greatest bread rise.
Your question might be “How does sugar type affect
bread rise?”
You imagine trying a bread recipe using white
granulated sugar, unbleached sugar, honey, agave
sirup, maple sirup, or stevia.
Then you can discuss the thinking process
with your parents or a science teacher
or a professional baker.
Is this a good, testable question?
Can you easily measure bread rising?
Yes.
You can use a ruler
to measure the height of each loaf after it's baked.
So this looks to be a good Science Fair topic.
It's testable,
it's measurable,
and you are interested in exploring the outcome.
Now, don't forget,
write this thinking process in your notebook.
If you discuss your idea with a professional,
make sure to write down what you talked about.
Again, this will be helpful for later reference.
Once you come up with a good question,
it's time to reword it into a statement
called a hypothesis.
A hypothesis is a testable statement, not a question
that is based on some observed situation
or it's based on the relationship
between elements in a situation.
To say it more simply, you're making an educated guess
based on the information
you have observed and researched.
You want to try to answer the question you have
and then conduct an experiment to see if the results
will either support your hypothesis or reject it.
So if your question is how does sugar type affect
bread rise,
you need to predict
which sugar type you think will work the best.
After doing some reading on the subject,
you might notice
that most yeast bread recipes call for white sugar.
So your hypothesis might be, “If I use white sugar
in yeast bread,
then it will rise higher than other sugars.”
Now, that's a statement you can test.
One of the easiest formats for a hypothesis is called
an if then statement.
It is worded in an easy to test way.
Some examples include
If a paper airplane is made of heavier paper,
then it will fly farther than paper
airplanes made of lighter paper.
Or if disinfecting wipes
are used on a cell phone daily,
then the cell phone will have less bacteria on it.
Compared to a cell phone
that is not daily disinfected.
At this point, you
have chosen your topic,
Done some background research on it,
choosen a testable question and formed a hypothesis.
All of these should be listed in your notebook.
Now it's time to set up your experiment.
Planning your experiment to test one variable.
When setting up your experiment,
it's important
to make every component the same
except the one you want to test.
Each changeable element in the experiment
is called a variable.
It can vary within the experiment,
for example, in varying the sugar type.
For the bread
baking example,
there are other things that could possibly change.
You could bake your loaves
in different types of bread pans.
You might use different recipes for each loaf.
You might bake the loaves at different time periods
or cook them in different heights within the oven.
All these variables, these things that can vary
can have an effect on your result,
which is how high the bread rises.
So in order to make it
so that only sugar type changes, you reduce or remove
all the other variables as best as possible.
That means
you should use the same type of baking pans,
bake them in the same oven, on the same oven rack,
and to make it even better,
bake each of the loaves in the center of the oven.
That might mean you have to bake them one at a time,
but oven temperatures vary around the inside.
You should follow the same recipe for all your loaves
using the same quantity of sugar.
But the only thing you vary is the type of sugar.
That way any differences in rise
will most likely be due to the sugar type
the yeast fed on.
Ideally, you should also conduct this same experiment
more than once
for each sugar type, preferably at least three times.
These are called trials and you conduct several trials
so you have more than one set of results to analyze.
Each trial will use the same bread pans, same recipe,
same placement in the oven, etc..
The only variable that changes is the sugar type.
If you're doing an
engineering project,
your experiment might look a bit different.
Say you're designing a machine or device to do a task
such as exploring the best wing design
for a paper
airplane glider
in order to make it travel the farthest.
You come up with a design, create a model, test it,
and then refine the design.
In this case,
you'll be making several illustrations
in your notebook that you can refer to.
Engineering Project Design
is more of a cyclical process.
You create a design test of several times,
make a design adjustment,
retest it again several times, and so on
until you find the design that works best.
However, just like the bread baking example,
you still keep all the other variables
beside wing design,
the same variables such as the height.
You release the plane from the way
you released the plane and the location.
You do the experiment
which would preferably be indoors.
So there's no wind variable
should all be kept constant.
Once you discover the best wing length, for example,
you could continue the process
keeping that best wing length
and then varying
another aspect such as adjusting wing width
or bending the wings upward on the tips
as you plan your experiment.
Make a list in your notebook
of all the materials you're going to use.
Also, write out your planned procedure.
Make sure your notebook is neat and easy to read.
Now it's time to do the actual experiment.
Conducting your experiment
and recording your observations
when conducting your experiment.
Measure the data carefully.
Record it in your notebook and include any units
in the bread baking in sample.
You might measure how many centimeters
high each loaf of bread is once
it's removed from the loaf pan.
Whenever possible, use the metric system of measure.
If you're testing the speed of a wooden car,
you could use meters per second
by marking off the number of meters
in the car's path and using a phone stopwatch.
When you record your data,
you might want to use a chart
or table to keep everything organized
along with your data.
Include photos
or illustrations of your experimental setup.
Make a note
if you had to change your procedure at all.
Sometimes.
Once you begin conducting an experiment,
you noticed new variables or other issues
that need to be adjusted.
That is perfectly fine as long as you make a note
of what you actually did
and include that in your final report.
Examining your results and making a conclusion.
The purpose of examining
the results of your experiment
is to look for any trends from your data
and come up with conclusions based on those trends.
In the bread baking example,
you might have observed that using honey
produced the highest rise.
Compare that result to your original hypothesis.
In our example,
the hypothesis was
if I use white sugar in yeast bread,
then it will rise higher than other sugars.
Was the hypothesis correct?
Did you discover a different result?
In this case, the hypothesis was not supported.
Now it's perfectly
okay if your results do not support your hypothesis.
In your discussion
about your experiment,
you can explain what you learned from the data
you collected
and add the new result as your conclusion.
The most important part of this step
is that you understand
your subject
well and can use the data
you collected to come up with a conclusion,
even if it's a conclusion you were surprised to get.
If you hypothesize
that White Sugar would produce the highest rise
and your results demonstrated
that honey produced the highest rise,
then you've learned something
by conducting this experiment
and you can adjust how you bake in the future.
Some experiments will produce data
that can be graphed.
This is the time to do that.
Analyzing data can include creating a pie chart,
a bar graph, a line graph, or tables.
These are great ways to present your data
in an easy-to-read manner.
Add these graphs or charts in your notebook
if you haven't already.
A final part of this step includes identifying
any data
that were way outside of the expected findings.
Perhaps one of the loaves of bread
using white sugar didn't rise at all.
If something like this happens,
think about what might have caused it.
Maybe in this one case
the yeast were dissolved in water that was too hot.
And perhaps they didn't survive.
Or perhaps the electricity went out during a portion
of your cooking time,
and the oven may have cooled down a bit.
Although both the water temperature
and the baking temperature
should be variables that are controlled.
Sometimes there are circumstances
that cause one of these variables to change.
Creating an unexpected outcome.
Creating a science fair display board and report.
Now it's time to take your scientific process,
findings and conclusions
and create a display board and project report.
It's best to write a report first
so you can chronicle
the entire process of your project.
The format of a science fair report
is basically the same as a lab report
you can find Helps
to writing a lab report on the Internet
or take a look at our simple
YouTube explanation at this link.
Younger students, of
course, are not expected to write
as much as older students.
For example, early elementary students should write
or dictate a sentence or two for each of their steps.
The display board is a way
people can tell at a glance
what your project was all about.
It is typically a three sided corrugated board
that presents all the elements
of your science experiment.
It has a clear title in the top center of the board.
That is a form of your original question.
As a general rule, the display board has your problem,
purpose and hypothesis on the left side of the board.
Your procedure and materials
go in the center of the board,
along with diagrams, graphs and or pictures.
Results and conclusion along with any other images
go on the right side of the board.
Keep everything clear and simple, not cluttered.
Don't include too much text
and add clear graphs or tables in coordinating colors.
Add pictures of you conducting your experiment
and close ups of some of your results.
The goal is to make your display board
pleasing to the eye.
Not too flashy and not too plain,
but you want to include all the major elements
in your conclusion.
Tie the new information
into a bigger picture statement
in our bread making example.
You might say that
producing higher rising
bread would create more delicious
bread and larger sized sandwiches.
Think about why people should care
about this particular issue.
Make it
something they will be happy they learned about,
something they can relate to.
How can this information help in other areas?
You can suggest how this information might benefit
other types of baking,
improving the texture and rise of cookies and cakes.
Preparing a short Presentation.
One of the unique things
about a science fair
is that students get to present their work to others.
Presentations might sound a little scary,
but you basically are describing
how you chose your project, what you did
and what you discovered.
It's a good way to teach others what you learned.
You can discuss how you came up with the idea
for your project,
whether it was a question
you had or a problem you wanted to try to solve.
Make sure you can explain the experimental process
and the results you collected.
Note whether your experimental results
supported your hypothesis or not,
and what you learned from this process.
If something surprised you, include that as well.
Finally, it's always good to include how your results
might be a springboard
to future experimentation on your topic.
Practice your presentation for your family or friends
to get some feedback and encouragement.
Science Fair projects help
you better understand a STEM topic
and see its real life application.
Plus,
they build creativity
and can be both interesting and fun.
You can immerse yourself in an experiment
exploring the answer to a question
you have eventually becoming an expert on the subject.
There are lots of potential experiments
to choose from,
but the best ones come from your own ideas.
You might be way more excited to test.
Do video games, really rot my brain versus.
Do plants need sunlight?
Both involve critical thinking and creativity.
And yet when the exploration comes out of something
you enjoy the fun and greater learning
begin.