ScienzFair Project Steps

ScienzFair's
Experimental Science Fair Projects

These are the steps in conducting an experimental Science Fair Project:

1) Select Your Topic
2) Study the Available Information
3) State the Purpose of Your Project
4) Develop Your Hypothesis
5) Plan Your Project Experiments
6) Conduct the Experiments
7) Analyze Your Data
8) Reach and State Your Conclusions
9) Prepare Your Final Report
10) Prepare Your Science Fair Exhibit
11) Prepare for the Judging

Now let's take a close look at each of these steps.

1. Select Your Topic: Finding a topic sometimes is the most difficult step of the project, but as you're searching, bear in mind that the best projects are those which relate to your personal interests. Choose a topic you're interested in, one you can be enthusiastic about and something you'd like to learn more about. Ideas frequently come from personal hobbies or problems that you think need solutions. Talk to your teachers, parents, or librarians for ideas. Review previous science fair projects at your school. Magazines such as "Popular Science", "Discover" and "Scientific American" are good sources of ideas. Don't forget to visit zoos or museums for ideas. Be sure to check our IDEAS pages and other internet resources for additional ideas.

Also bear in mind that your time, money and resources are limited, so don't bite off more than you can chew. You can't get all the answers with a single science fair projects so it's a good idea to keep the scope of your project narrowly defined and tightly focused.

Prepare a general timetable for your project. Make sure the topic you've picked can be examined, experimented and completed in the time you have available. Plan your timetable on a calendar and build in the extra time to submit approval forms and meet with your research advisor so he/she can review your work periodically and advise you or how to proceed. Some projects will require prior approval from the advisor or the Fair's Review Committee. In most states you cannot experiment on people, animals or bacteria without prior approval and close supervision. Be sure to check with your advisor before deciding to try such projects.

Allow plenty of extra time to collect data or make experimental observations. Even what looks like a very simple experimental project sometimes develops twists and does not go as you expect. And in your planning, leave extra time at the end to prepare your display exhibit and to write your final project report.

2. Study the Available Information: Once your topic has been selected, begin researching the available information. Go to your school or local library, as well as the internet, and read everything you can find that relates to your topic. Books and magazines can help provide detailed information about your topic. Talk to other people (teachers, professors, doctors, engineers, scientists, etc.) who may know about your topic. And don't hesitate to write to companies or scientists who might be able to supply additional information about your topic. Many companies are more than willing to help with science fair projects, especially if you're using their products, and may provide information you can't find anywhere else.

Studying the information related to your project is a very important step as it provides you with additional knowledge of the topic you've selected. This study phase will help you organize and understand the concepts relative to your project, and allows you to take notes and document the accepted facts, concepts and procedures relative to your topic.

In taking notes, you want to carefully record your reference information so that you have proper documentation of your sources and can give credit to the various authors. Be sure your notes follow the general outline and theme of your project so that they can easily be included in your final project conclusions and report. It's a good idea to keep your notes on 3x5 cards which can then be indexed for later use. For each book, magazine article or research paper, you need to keep record of the following information: Topic, Author, Publication Title, Date of Publication, and a brief Summary of the contents of that written material.

Rather than index cards, you may decide to keep a project notebook which covers your information research as well as the other steps taken in completing your project. If you decide to keep a project notebook make sure it is sturdy and permanently bound and date each page along with the notes. Use the notebook to keep all your questions, observations, and records including even the failures your project may experience. Even failed experiments can produce new and exciting data.

Whether you use 3x5 card or a project notebook, or even a personal computer, remember that thorough and complete notes are an absolute necessity and will go far in helping the judges assess the value of your project.

3. State the Purpose of Your Project: Each science fair project needs a definite purpose or goal - what is it you propose to do? What questions do you wish to answer? What are you trying to accomplish? It is important to decide on a specific purpose early in your project so that you can limit your experiments and efforts to that purpose rather than letting your science project become so large and cumbersome that it cannot be completed in the time you have available. A single project can only provide a limited number of answers yet many students make the mistake of choosing a purpose so broad that the project then involves more work than expected and may even require skills and materials which cannot be obtained in the time allotted.

As a general rule, you should be able to state the purpose of your project in one, or at the most, two sentences. If you cannot state your purpose as a brief statement, it is likely that you need to give further attention to selecting a more narrow and more highly focused project. And when you can describe the purpose of your project in a brief, objective statement, you will find there will be little difficulty in deciding on a title for your project.

And now that you have researched your topic, and have a great deal of background information, you should be able to put your ideas together as a "hypothesis", a theory you have that is testable, that can be examined and proven or disproven by experiments or observations.

4. Develop Your Hypothesis: The hypothesis is closely related to the stated purpose of your project. A hypothesis, simply stated, is just an educated prediction as to what is going to happen as a result of your experimentation; it's a statement of how your project is going to turn out. The big difference between the "purpose" and "hypothesis" is that your purpose says what you're going to do, while the hypothesis tells how you think it will turn out.

Keep your hypothesis short and simple, stated in one sentence if possible:

"Acid rain will stunt plant growth."
"Background music will increase short term retention of test items."
"Teenage boys will have greater lung capacity than teenage girls."
"A higher voltage will produce more current flow through a resistor."

From reading such short sentences, anyone can tell what you intend to explore and what result you expect to obtain from any experimentation. Remember always that you must be able to test your hypothesis; that's what your experimentation is all about. A hypothesis is a statement or a belief on your part, that under controlled conditions, a measurable result will occur.

Finally, be very, very careful about using vague terms in your hypothesis. "Music will make people feel happier." is a hypothesis but it one that is very hard to prove. The term "happier" is vague, and any measure is very subjective and opinionated. If you can't accurately put a number on it try to stay away from such terms.

5. Plan Your Project Experiments: For your project to be successful, you need to give some careful thought to how your experiments will be carried out. It's a good idea to plan you experimentation on paper first, to see if you can figure out in advance what you have to do, how to do it, when you will need certain supplies, etc. Often when you do your planning on paper rather than just jumping in, you will find that worrisome obstacles tend to disappear. Planning gives you the chance to work out details in advance.

You need to think about where you will be doing your experiments; at home or at school. Will you need any special equipment and if so where can you find it? Can you borrow school equipment or do you have to purchase your own? What are the costs involved with materials you will need? Do you have or can you obtain the necessary funding? What are some of the problems that you can foresee and what kinds of things can you do to try to overcome those problems?

Write down the experiments in the sequence you plan to do them and then add them to the timetable you developed back in step one. If your experiments are complex, break them down into a sequence of small steps so that you can go over the procedures in advance to make sure you don't miss anything.

Also, if you're not familiar with the Scientific Method be sure to see our explanation page.

6. Conduct the Experiments: Remember to do your experiments under controlled conditions where only one variable at a time is changed. And remember that for most experiments you will need a control, that is, an experimental object that is allowed to proceed normally with no variables changed.

For example, if you were experimenting with plant food to see how much extra growth it would cause, you would need some "control" plants which did not receive the plant food. That way you can compare plants that did receive extra nutrients to ones that did not.

Experiments are almost always performed on the assumption of "cause and effect". If you change this, it causes that to happen. If you used plant food on one group of plants and not on another, and the ones that received the plant food grew the largest, then you would assume that the plant food was the "cause" of the increased growth, the "effect". However, for that assumption to be true, you have to make sure that ALL plants are treated the same EXCEPT for the plant food. The amount of water, light, etc. for all plants must be the same. That's the only way you can have a true cause and effect measurement.

Experimenters refer to the variable which is the cause as an "independent variable". It is independent in the sense that you control it. You decide how much plant food to add and when to add it. It is completely independent of sunlight, water, etc. The result, or effect (in this case extra plant growth), is called the "dependent variable". And it is dependent. How much extra growth there is "depends" on the plant food, and possibly how much of the plant food.

You will need to be able to identify the control group, and the independent and the dependent variable for the judges, so make sure it's in your notes. Speaking of notes, it's very important to keep detailed notes of your experiments, recording all your measurements and observations. Don't trust your memory. You will often forget the fact that you later need most. Write everything down. How tall was it? How wide? How deep? What color? What weight? What movement? Record anything that is relative to the experiment you are doing.

Also, you may need more than a single object. Any time you are experimenting with living plants or animals you may need to have a group of items to experiment on instead of single objects. If you wanted to see the effect of water of seed sprouting, for example, and planted only one seed, it's possible that particular seed would not sprout whether it is watered or not. So for most experiments, don't base you conclusions on the results with a single object. Your results will be far more reliable and accurate with larger groups. If cost is not prohibitive, use 5 or 6 control items and an equal number to experiment on. And again, keep DETAILED notes of your experimenting.

7. Analyze Your Data: Examine your results. When you finish all your experiments and observations, start organizing your data. Did your experiment prove your hypothesis? Or did something else occur? Why or why not? Did you do the experiments more than once? Did you do them the same way each time? If your experiment did not work the way you thought it would, why didn't it? Did anything happen you had not expected? Did you make any mistakes in your tests or observations? Hopefully, you found that your hypothesis was true. But if it was not, the negative results can be just as valuable to you, especially if you can figure out why you got the results you did.

Hopefully, your research showed that there IS a measurable cause and effect relationship between variables, but it would be just as important to learn that there is NOT such a relationship. So all is not lost if your hypothesis is shown to be wrong. But that's what we're looking for in the data analysis phase... a relationship between variable, if it exists.

If a relationship is found, whether positive or negative, see if it lends itself to visual depiction. It's always easier for a judge to evaluate your project if you can show a graph or pie chart instead of column after column of numbers.

8. Reach and State Your Conclusions: Now draw the conclusions. Decide what you proved through your experiments. Did the variable have the desired cause and effect relationship. If you used more than one variable, which ones were important? Is your project concluded or do you need to go back and collect more data?

And at this point, remember that you NEVER alter your data to make it fit your hypothesis. The point of an experiment is to find out what is the fact, not to prove your hypothesis. If your final results do not support your original hypothesis, you simply say so. You have still accomplished a valid set of experiments and a valid scientific investigation. Experiments are not only to prove a hypothesis but to disprove them as well. So either result is acceptable, just so you did good experimental work.

9. Prepare Your Final Report: Most science fair competitions will require that you prepare a final report describing your project in some detail. The report should be a clearly written description listing all the steps in your project, stating your project title, the purpose of the project, your hypothesis, and a detailed description of both your experiments and your conclusions. Your purpose in preparing this report is to provide interested readers (your sponsor, other teachers, and the judges) with a detailed look at what you were doing and convince them that your experiment was valid and that you reached the correct conclusions. Write your report clearly and accurately, and if you have access to a typewriter or computer be sure to type it rather than submitting a handwritten report.

In most cases your report should contain the following sections, but review this list with your sponsor/advisor. In a given case you may need additional sections, or fewer. This is only a general guideline to how to prepare your final report.

You final report will normally include the following sections:

A. Title Page
B. Abstract
C. Project Introduction
D. Details of the Experiments
F. Description of Results
G. Assessment and & Conclusion
H. Research Bibliography
I. Thank You's and Acknowledgements

A. Title Page - The name of your project goes at the top of the page and should have both impact and information. Also, if you want a real eye-catcher for the judges, the title of your project is a good place to do it. For example:

"THE EARTH AS AN OVEN: A study of the effects of greenhouse gases"
"SUPER-SIZED PLANTS: A study of plant growth nutrients and fertilizers"
"DRUNKEN INSECTS?: A study of the effects of alcohol on ant colonies"
"MUSIC OR DESTRUCTION? A study of how loud rock music affects hearing"

Notice in the examples there are two parts to your title. First is the eye-catcher, something that makes your project stand out from all the others, and secondly is a short one sentence description of your entire project. Check with your teacher or sponsor to make sure you're not overstating the case in your title, but do try to put a bit of drama into it.

Below the title you should have your identification: include your name, your grade level, your advisor's name, the school name and school address. While you don't want your title page to be over-bearing you can nevertheless use your computer to select some bold or italic type for parts of it and possibly make the type a bit larger than normal. Check with your teacher or sponsor to determine acceptable style limits.

B. Abstract - The second page of your report contains what is known as an "abstract". An abstract is a brief summary of your entire project, compressed down into just a paragraph or two, and those paragraphs may well be the most important paragraphs in your entire report.

The abstract allows the judge (or others) to decide if your project is interesting enough for them to take time to read the entire report, or hear your presentation if you will be making one. And the abstract should also provide the results of your experimentation so that a reader will know what your results are without having to read the entire report.

Your abstract should be accurate, brief and factual. It should contain only information that is also found in the body of your report, and the information you give in the abstract should not draw conclusions or make evaluations. The information should be strictly factual as to what was done, what the variables were, what the experiments were, and what the results were. It should also be brief, never more than two short paragraphs or one long one. Most science fair competitions will limit you to 250 words or less. Also check your spelling and grammar. You will lose points if it is incorrect.

C. Project Introduction - The main body of your report should begin with a brief introduction which provides a bit of background for the area of your project and explains why you decided to do this project. If there is a scientific problem or question that was at issue, and you were trying to answer that question, be sure to include it in your introduction. Reference the research you did and explain how it confirms that your project would be a useful experimental project to complete. Your introduction should be interesting and concise, but you are not limited to a set number of words. Use the words necessary to lay the foundation for your interest in the project and for conducting your experiment.

D. Details of the Experiments - In this section you should provide accurate, detailed information on the setup of your experiment, how you set up control groups (if any were used), and the specific nature of the variables and how you manipulated those variables. Also give an accurate description of your measurement methods, whether it was merely by observation, measurements with a ruler, some type of testing kit, or a sophisticated electronic measuring device. Your descriptions in this section should be thorough enough that another student could read your report and duplicate your experiments.

F. Description of Results - This section of your report is used for the data you gathered. It is essentially a statement of what happened as a result of your experimentation. If your results lend themselves to tables, by all means use tables. Where possible, convert the table information into graphs and add them to your report. Graphs often allow visual understanding far faster than a table of numbers or other data. Be sure to include all pertinent measurements, and clearly label all your tables and graphs and show the appropriate scales and units of measurements.

G. Assessment and & Conclusion - This is the wrap-up for your report. In this section you have the opportunity to give your assessment of your project and share your conclusions with the reader. What is the meaning of the experimental results? What do the experiments prove, or disprove? Did you meet the stated purpose of doing the experiment? Was your hypothesis proven or disproven? Are the results you achieved conclusive or is more work and further experimentation suggested? Are your results in agreement with the research you did?

H. Research Bibliography - A bibliography lists all the books, magazine articles, and web pages that you read or referenced in doing your preliminary research. Check with your advisor/sponsor as to the accepted style for listing your resource materials.

I. Thank You's and Acknowledgements - Your project was not completed without help from several other people. The final section of your report should list the people who helped you. Give their names and acknowledge them for the assistance they provided. Include your teachers, advisor/sponsor, parents, friends and any other students who helped or advised you.

10. Prepare Your Science Fair Exhibit: Your first step will be to check with your advisor to obtain the dimensions and layout of of the exhibit space. Many exhibits are a 3-part open U shape that stands roughly three feet high. You will want to make sure that the frame and backboards are sturdy and not prone to wobbling or falling over.

The exhibit is the visual presentation of your project so prepare it carefully. Use graphs, charts, and clear bold lettering to highlight this display. If your information is printed on colored paper rather than white, be sure that you use light colors so that your black type will be distinctive and stand out from the background. Bar charts and pie charts can, of course, be a bit more colorful. The information on your display does not necessarily have to be typed, but it IS recommended. In any event it must be neat and well organized. You can use colored borders and decorations to make your site more appealing and fun but be sure people can understand what you did and what the results of your project were. That's really what you'll be judged on.

11. Prepare for the Judging: Spend some time planning how you want to go about explaining your project to the judges. At the fair itself you will need to look neat, speak clearly, and avoid fidgeting or other distracting mannerisms. Practice your presentation and explanation to several people BEFORE you actually go to the science fair. Use your parents, friends, grandparents, etc., to try out your presentation. Explain your project to them, much as you plan to explain to the judges, and ask them for constructive criticism to help you improve the way you explain or present your project. The advance practice will help you be calmer and more prepared for the fair itself and will greatly improve your presentation to the judges.

NOTE: Also see our Winning Tips page and Judging page.