Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

In a county or regional fair, is time better spent making a great display or focusing on content? That is, should I give myself less time to proofread/rewrite/further develop my report to have an attractive display, or should I focus on making the report top-notch and have a lackluster board?

hi khg,

For a county/regional fair, judges generally don't have time to read your report at all. Normally they only have a limited amount of time to read your board/materials before judging. If you have to speak to the judges and you have a limited amount of time, I'd prepare for talking to the judges the most. If you have an amazing board, sometimes you won't get as many questions, but it really depends on the judges. Most of their impression will be from talking to you. It is much more important to really understand the science behind your project and what the results mean. Why is your project important?

Try to focus on answering those questions. Obviously you don't want to have a poor board either with lots of typos, just make sure it has the essentials on it and there are enough examples of your results to point to as you are talking (or they can be in a notebook that you can bring out). If you did a great project, it will show when you talk to the judges about your work. I have seen many people with simple boards win at fairs. An amazing board looks nice, but it's not the most important thing. It only supplements the main part: you!

We have some articles on how to prepare for judging, so why don't you take a look:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... tips.shtml
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... tive.shtml

Good luck!