Project Guides (Page 3)

Experimental Procedure

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Overview Now that you have come up with a hypothesis, you need to develop an experimental procedure for testing whether it is true or false. The first step of designing your experimental procedure involves planning how you will change your independent variable and how you will measure the impact that this change has on the dependent variable. To guarantee a fair test when you are conducting your experiment, you need to make sure that the only thing you change is the independent variable. And,… Read more

Science Fair Project Background Research Plan

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Why the Need for Background Research? So that you can design an experiment, you need to research what techniques and equipment might be best for investigating your topic. Rather than starting from scratch, savvy investigators want to use their library and Internet research to help them find the best way to do things. You want to learn from the experience of others rather than blunder around and repeat their mistakes. A scientist named Mike Kalish put it humorously like this: "A year in the lab… Read more

Electricity, Magnetism, & Electromagnetism Tutorial

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Introduction This resource provides an introduction to different topics in electricity and magnetism that you may find useful when doing background research for your Science Buddies projects. The information you will find here is sufficient for most of the projects on the Science Buddies website, but remember that there are entire books written about each topic, so there is much more to learn! We recommend reading the sections in order, but you can click on the links below to jump straight to a… Read more

How to Make Dilutions and Serial Dilutions

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Dilutions Making dilutions is a common part of science projects in many areas of science including chemistry, biology, medicine, cooking, and environmental sciences. This video and written tutorial will guide you through how to make a dilution and how to calculate the dilution factor. How to make serial dilutions is also explained. If you need help making a stock solution to dilute, check out our How to Make Solutions for Chemistry and Biology Experiments tutorial. Read more

Conclusions

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Overview Your conclusions will summarize whether or not your science fair project results support or contradict your original hypothesis. If you are doing an Engineering or Computer Science programming project, then you should state whether or not you met your design criteria. You may want to include key facts from your background research to help explain your results. Do your results suggest a relationship between the independent and dependent variable? Read more

Science Fair Project Final Report

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Sample Here is a sample science fair project final report. Note: The author's teacher did not require source citations and required a different format for the bibliography. Science Buddies staff added references and reformatted the bibliography at a later date; consequently, the page and volume references are fictitious for some of the sources. Read more

Measuring Plant Growth

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To capture enough data on the overall health of your plants, we recommend that you record at least one final weight measure, one measure of root health, and all of the observation measurements that pertain to the type of plant you are using. Weighing Plants: Fresh vs. Dry Weight Measuring Fresh Weight: While you can technically measure the fresh weight of plants without harming them, the simple act of removing a plant from its growing "medium" can cause trauma and affect the… Read more

Science Fair Directory

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How to Find Science Fairs and Other STEM Competitions There are hundreds of science fairs, engineering fairs, and other STEM competitions held locally, nationally, and internationally every year. Some competitions require students to start at the local level and win in their category to advance. Other competitions are open to all students. The listings below include a collection of regional and state level science fairs for middle and high school students across the US. Each entry notes… Read more

Writing a Research Paper for Your Science Fair Project

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Overview Year after year, students find that the report called the research paper is the part of the science fair project where they learn the most. So, take it from those who preceded you, the research paper you are preparing to write is super valuable. Read more

Define the Problem

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Finding an Idea for Your Engineering Project You know that you want to do an engineering design project, but how do you come up with an idea or find a problem to solve? How do you uncover a new problem that no one has tried to solve yet? Or how do you pick and choose, from all of the products, systems, and environments already out there, one that you might want to improve? This process of uncovering a problem, or identifying the need for change or improvement to an existing solution, is… Read more

Project Guides (151 results)

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