Doing Your Experiments for the Science Fair Okay, so you have decided on a topic, read and learned about it, and come up with your hypothesis. It is time to do the experiments! One of the most difficult issues in scientific and engineering experiments is to limit the scope. Limiting the scope seems simple enough: your experiments need to be focused enough to figure out if your hypothesis was right or wrong. For elementary grades, this may be just a handful of experiments. For mid-high and high school students, experimental runs may number in the tens or even hundreds. Much depends on the type of hypothesis and topic. Some may require several hours or days for each experimental data point; others may only need a few minutes for each data point.
The key is to carefully think about each experiment before doing it. How many experiments do I need to check my hypothesis? Have I thought about variables? Do I have a "control" within my experiments? What will I change from experiment to experiment? What to I want to measure, and how exactly will I measure it? You might want to talk to a parent, scientist or engineer before starting your experiments to make sure you have considered each of these questions carefully. This may sound confusing, but people are willing to help you. And, thinking ahead will assure you do just the right amount of experiments for your science fair project.
Keeping track of what you do for your science fair project is also important. Just like scientists and engineers do every day, you should keep a notebook. Write down in your notebook your thoughts while you are figuring out what your project will be about. Keep notes while you do your research about your topic. Make sure you write down where you get references from the library, internet, or conversations with people.
For your experiments, make sketches of what the experiment looks like. Note what equipment you needed to use, how each was used, and exactly what you measured. Photographs are also useful, both for putting in your notebook, and for preparing your display for the judges. Once your experiments are completed, you should also decide if your hypothesis was right or wrong; write down what you think and why. Most projects make us wish we had studied another question within our topic area, or done some different types of experiments to help with our hypothesis. Go ahead and write these thoughts down, as well as recommendations for future work.
An excellent resource on the steps required to start, conduct, and complete a science fair project are available at The Science Fair Zone at www.sciserv.org. Two specific links at this site are worth reviewing: "Student Checklist" and "Tips for a Successful Project". In addition, links to the rules, a review of the scientific method, and many other science resources available on the internet are detailed at this website.
Remember, you never know for sure what you will learn from your science fair project; maybe you will learn something that no one else has ever known. Consider these comments which are referenced from the Daily Oklahoman: Your project will contribute to more understanding of our world, how it works, what it is made of, what lives in it, and what is around it. Certainly you will learn more yourself, but you may also discover a new process of manufacturing, or perhaps a different and stronger building material, or define safe limits of chemicals to prevent harm to the environment, to name a few practical applications of basic research. Recent projects at the Bartlesville District Science Fair that moved on to the International Science and Engineering Fair researched technical areas such as fabrics for wheelchairs, chimpanzee behavior, trash separators, the effects of chemicals on aquatic insects, high-speed photography and acoustical ordering of particles, the search for cancer cures, chemical reaction heats, and plant growth in hypergravity.
Questions? Contact the Director, Lee Carvell, at 918-661-3450.
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