Advice for students
What will the Science Fair Judge ask me?
Judges are the “referees” in the sport of science fair. As with most refereed sports, the losing teams will often blame the referees for failure and, in some cases that is the case, and in other cases you just got beat. Since there is no appeal process, no coach’s challenge, and no instant replay for … Continue reading
How to Make a Great Science Fair Project Backboard: An example
Many of you should be ready to make your project backboards. Here is a great example of an attractive board with a good balance of art and science. Sarah is in the 6th grade. Some things to notice: -a catchy title -a clear testable question -logical and expected order of sections from left to right … Continue reading
Data Driven Science
Science is all about the data – so many scientists envision the data they are going to generate BEFORE they do experiments. . It is a good way of approaching a science fair project because you will know what you are going to do with your data even before you have it. Unfortunately, sometimes students … Continue reading
The KEY to designing your own science fair project is …
So you have to do a science fair project and there are plenty of websites that will give you detailed, step-by-step directions like a recipe for a cake – but, that’s not “real science”. If you have found your way to my website – I hope you are at least thinking about designing your own … Continue reading
There’s no crying in Baseball … or in the Science Fair
Science fairs should be educational, exciting, and tons of fun, but — more often than not — they result in heartache and, if you have competitive kids like mine, in tears. Generally only 1 to 3 kids will place and the rest will go home having no idea why they weren’t selected as one of … Continue reading
How to prepare a final report for your science fair project
Generally a teacher would give guidelines as to what is expected in the final report, but if none come home with the project directions, then I recommend including the following sections (similar to a scientific paper) in this order: • Title, author, date • Abstract: 1 paragraph summary of entire project • Introduction: Background information … Continue reading
Creative Ideas for NEXT YEAR’s Science Fair Project
If you are working on this year’s project, and you have less than a week to get it done…. Check out my suggestions in posts for “popcorn projects” or “bubblegum projects” or even “paper airplanes” — They can all be done in a weekend (or even a day if you are really stuck). But if … Continue reading
Score: Kid 1, Parent 0 — Encouraging your child to pick their own science fair project topic
Finally! Yesterday, my daughter came home from school with the much anticipated science fair project guidelines. Her school didn’t coordinate the event in time for higher level science fair competitions, so these projects would be for just for a school demonstration. “What are we doing this year?” I exclaimed with the enthusiasm of an over-involved, … Continue reading
What do scientists do?
Hold your horses! Cool your jets! Take it down a notch! Take a chill pill! The English language is wonderfully redundant — there are many ways to say the same thing. It turns out that a bacterial community is also redundant too. In my “day job” I do full time research on aquatic bacteria. Background … Continue reading
Hedge Betting
Nobody likes to be wrong! –And one of the hardest parts of a science fair project for many kids is to accept is that the data from their experiment might lead them to conclude their hypothesis was “rejected” or “unsupported” (NOTE: we never say a hypothesis was “wrong”). Last Friday I stumbled upon this creative … Continue reading
