Students must have their
projects approved by their teacher BEFORE starting.
Students in grades 6-8 are
asked to submit a problem-solving project (experiment-project) following the
guidelines of the Scientific Method.
JUDGING
Judges may be teachers,
parents, and/or other community members. All projects are judged several times
and a comparison of the results is made to determine a project's score.
Certificates are awarded to all entries, with First , Second, Third Place and Honorable Mention ribbons going to the
projects which meet Live Oak Middle criteria. A selection from the Blue Ribbon
winners is chosen to represent Live Oak Middle at the district Science Fair at
SLU.
DISTRICT SCIENCE FAIR
The number of projects sent to the District Science Fair is determined by our winners from Live Oak Middle’s Fair. LOM always sends its full quota of projects to be judged at this level. LOM teachers and students can be proud of the fact that traditionally LOM projects do very well at this advanced level of judging. These are the steps in conducting an experimental Science Fair Project:
1) 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
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. 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.
Follow the timetable given to you for your
project. Make sure the topic you've picked can be examined, experimented and
completed in the time you have available. 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 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.
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?. 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 narrower 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.
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.. Planning gives you the chance to work out details in advance.
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.
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 in the notebook discussed in section 2. 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: You will be required to 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 your teacher 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. Your final report will normally include the following
sections:
A.
Title Page
B.
Abstract
C.
Project
Introduction
D.
Details of the
Experiments
E.
Description of
Result
F.
Assessment and
Conclusion
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 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. An example of the required abstract will follow this section.
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?
10. Prepare Your Science Fair Exhibit: Your first step will be to obtain the dimensions and
layout of the exhibit space (see below). You will be able to buy the display
boards in the office. The exhibit is the visual presentations 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. PLEASE NOTE: 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.
Your experiment needs to be
placed on a freestanding display board. It cannot be over 48" wide and
24" deep.
Experiments are usually presented on a
three-sided display. Three sides of a cardboard box will be fine. Remember to
check your measurements; your display board can be smaller, but NOT bigger.
(TIP: Before you attach graphs, photos, list of materials, etc. arrange all
items on your display board to make sure it is the way you want it.) Equipment
may be placed on the table in front of your display board.
All student and teacher
names MUST be written ONLY on the back of the display board.
Things to put on your display
board
(what the judges are looking
for)
1. TITLE Make it
"catchy" and "original".
2. QUESTION A title
can also be your "Question". (TIP: Remember the judges are looking
for you to "ask a question" as part of your project.)
3. INTRODUCTION
(optional) Tell all important background information such as, how you decided
to do the project (saying that it was assigned doesn't count!), who helped you,
what special research you had to do.
4. HYPOTHESIS This is
an educated guess as to the possible solution to your question. Tell why you
think your experiment will turn out this way. (TIP: Do not forget this step.
Many students skip this but judges will be looking for it.)
5. MATERIALS List all
the materials you used. You might also list all the reading resources you used
on a second list.
6. PROCEDURE Explain
in detail what steps you took to do your experiment. Be sure you have a CONTROL
in your experiment (a CONTROL is a comparison to prove your results - a way of
proving that your results are accurate). Example: if you are trying to prove
that Crest is the best toothpaste, you have to test Crest and several other
brands over a period of time to see if it is the best.
7. RESULTS Show
charts, photos and graphs of your results. (TIP: The judges need to know that
you tested your hypothesis (your guess) enough times to prove your results.)
8. CONCLUSION Be sure
you answer the question you asked to start with. (TIP: Do not forget this step,
judges look for it. Reporting your results may not be the same as answering
your question...make sure you do.) Use as much detail as necessary. Also
explain everything that went wrong and how you might change the experiment if
you were to do it again. (TIP: The judges do not care if your experiment did
not prove your hypothesis (guess). It's OK to be wrong. It is important that
you tried to see if your guess was right.)
TIP FROM A PAST JUDGE: "Many upper grade
students make the mistake of actually doing a science model instead of an
experiment. While some of these can be very detailed and beautifully presented
they cannot be judged as an experiment and as such will not get a very high
score. Remember, doing an experiment involves asking a question that will take
time and comparison to answer. Example: asking "Can I build a door
bell?" is not an experiment. It is a science model. Asking, "What
kind of materials make the best bell" is an experiment. Please be clear
about this before starting. Your teacher will be able to help you in this
area."