Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

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ppl please please be patient to read this and help me on how to move in my project!!

Hi!
Your project is really interesting! I would suggest that you check with your science fair on different guidelines and see if perhaps you can present your materials in a more appealing way that will really highlight the uniqueness of your project. ScienceBuddies itself has actually compiled a wonderful guide on writing up your research and designing display boards to help you:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ndex.shtml

In regard to your actual project, you should ask yourself a few questions:

How feasible is my project? How long would it take for my project to reach the market - in effect, how practical is this in terms of manufacturing and testing?

How much would this potential system cost?

I think the biggest issue that you currently have is that you are trying to integrate too many things at once. For instance, you discuss your idea of a vest, which later expands to glasses, wrist watches, etc. - all of which are not explained quite clearly as to the actual mechanism in which they work. They are great ideas, but maybe you need to develop these particular ideas by explaining exactly HOW they work, and not just what technologies are in each one.

Definitely keep running with this project, but do try to improve how detailed your descriptions are so people can fully appreciate what your thought processes are. Best of luck!

ya thanks i think i have to be more organised and any ways i can improve my paper? and i think i will do the heart attack thing then move to firefighters and so on so thanks do think i can win next year if i correct these mistakes?

Hi guys this is my project on a heart attack detector and alert system integrated in a wearable vest i actually lost the entry in my local science fair IRIS (india) and im felling very odd as i was quite confident i could win an entry into the regionals:( so i guess my paper presentation was not very appeling so guys pls gimme a lot of tips and please edit my presentation and pls pls simplify my presentation and pls tell me how i can win next time ive attached my project documents pls see and edit and pls send it and ur tips on how i can do well to [e-mail deleted by moderator] pls guys im trustin u ppl thanks
Yours Sincere,
R.Vignesh

OK, I can tell that you're really enthusiastic about this idea, and it certainly seems useful! But here are my comments on your writeup:

Citations, to authoritative sources with relevant information: you don't have any. Everything below with an asterisk (*) -- and probably other things -- should be referenced.

Take a look through our guide to project presentation (which you were given a link to a few days ago): https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ndex.shtml Even though yours is more of an engineering project so it won't necessary have a clear-cut hypothesis, it's still a good idea to aim for some logical flow in the presentation of your ideas.
-- First, you want to give an introduction with background to the problem you're addressing. How are all of these different tests related to an imminent heart attack?* Are you looking for an increase or decrease in blood pressure, CO2, etc?* What kind of ECG waveforms?* What kinds of alert systems have been implemented before, and how well do they work?* What are the design criteria that your device should fulfill?
-- Now move on to explaining your idea, including the components necessary to perform each test*. How will you integrate all of the data: is an alert sent as soon as one test is abnormal, or do you want three to be abnormal simultaneously? How do you define "normal" for each test?* It would be really good to include a diagram or photo of a prototype for the entire device instead of pictures of a few discrete components -- I'm having trouble picturing the whole thing.
-- Then you want to evaluate how successful your idea is. Even if you haven't built and tested it, describe how it could be evaluated to determine how well it meets the design criteria. That might involve surveys to determine patient comfort and compliance (i.e. how many actual wear it?) as well as statistics about false alarms and heart attacks that failed to trigger the alert system.
-- A conclusion in which you sum everything up and talk about possible extensions of the project.

Your writeup certainly has SOME of this information, but overall it's difficult to read. It would help to label sections and to have someone proofread your work to eliminate things like single-sentence paragraphs, extremely long sentences, and informal punctuation.

Staryl13 also gave you some good comments the other day. Depending on your science fair's criteria, you might also have been marked down because (it seems like) you haven't actually built the system or because you're doing an engineering project instead of a science project with a hypothesis, variables, etc. Those things aren't *necessarily* bad, but you'll have to check what their criteria are.

This isn't meant to discourage you -- like I said, you have a lot of enthusiasm and are certainly tackling a big problem. But as you've found, it's important to communicate your ideas effectively!

Amanda

Also, I've merged this topic with the one you posted previously so everyone can see the whole conversation.

Amanda