Project Guides (Page 4)

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

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

Science Fair Project Abstract

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What's an Abstract? An abstract is an abbreviated version of your science fair project final report. For most science fairs it is limited to a maximum of 250 words (check the rules for your competition). The science fair project abstract appears at the beginning of the report as well as on your display board. Almost all scientists and engineers agree that an abstract should have the following five pieces: Introduction. This is where you describe the purpose for doing your science fair… Read more

What Are Variables? How To Choose Variables For Your Science Project

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What are variables? In science, a variable is anything that can change or be different. It can be a thing (like a shirt or a jacket), a characteristic (like rough or smooth), or a situation (like sunny or cloudy). Scientists want to know how things work. They want to understand why things happen and use that information to predict what will happen in the future. To do this, they use experiments to see if one thing causes another thing to happen. They follow a special process called… Read more

Design Notebook

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The design process takes days, weeks, sometimes even months or years, to complete and involves many different steps and phases along the way. If you recorded all of your work in different places, it would be almost impossible to find important thoughts when you need to refresh your memory. And, it would be difficult to gather all your work to present your final solution. To avoid being disorganized, designers and engineers keep design notebooks, where they record every detail of… 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

Sample Materials List & Experimental Procedure

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Materials List CD player & a CD (low drain device) Three identical flashlights (medium drain device) Camera flash (high drain device) AA size Duracell and Energizer batteries AA size of a "heavy-duty" (non-alkaline) battery (I used Panasonic) Voltmeter & a AA battery holder Kitchen timer Read more

All About Agar

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An Introduction to Agar With its distinctive smell, one can easily distinguish agar from the other materials commonly found in a laboratory. Chemically, agar is a polymer made up of subunits of the sugar galactose, and is a component of the cell walls of several species of red algae that are usually harvested in eastern Asia and California. Dissolved in boiling water and cooled, laboratory agar looks gelatinous. Although agar's chief use is as a culture medium for various microorganisms,… 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

Materials List

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Preparing a Materials List What type of supplies and equipment will you need to complete your science fair project? By making a complete list ahead of time, you can make sure that you have everything on hand when you need it. Some items may take time to obtain, so making a materials list in advance represents good planning! Make the materials list as specific as possible, and be sure you can get everything you need before you start your science fair project. While you are making your shopping… Read more

Project Guides (151 results)

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