Project Guides (Page 3)

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Below are standard formats and examples for basic bibliographic information recommended by the Modern Language Association (MLA). For more information on the MLA format, see MLA Style Center. Basics Your list of works cited should begin at the end of the paper on a new page with the centered title, Works Cited. Alphabetize the entries in your list by the author's last name, using the letter-by-letter system (ignore spaces and other punctuation.) If the author's name is unknown,… Read more

Data Analysis & Graphs

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Overview Take some time to carefully review all of the data you have collected from your experiment. Use charts and graphs to help you analyze the data and patterns. Did you get the results you had expected? What did you find out from your experiment? Really think about what you have discovered and use your data to help you explain why you think certain things happened. Calculations and Summarizing Data Often, you will need to perform calculations on your raw data in order to get the results… 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

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

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

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

Variables for Beginners

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Doing a Fair Test It is important for an experiment to be a fair test. You conduct a fair test by making sure that you change one factor at a time while keeping all other conditions the same. For example, let's imagine that we want to measure which is the fastest toy car to coast down a sloping ramp. If we gently release the first car, but give the second car a push start, did we do a fair test of which car was fastest? No! We gave the second car an unfair advantage by pushing it to… 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

Designing a Survey

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The key to obtaining good data through a survey is to develop a good survey questionnaire. Whether you are conducting interviews or mailing out surveys, you will need to know how to design a good survey questionnaire. What is a survey questionnaire? Survey questionnaires present a set of questions to a subject who with his/her responses will provide data to a researcher. On the surface, it seems a fairly simple task to write up a set of questions to collect information, but there are many… Read more

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