How to Get Started
On this page we'll walk you through the steps of a typical science fair project. We'll use a made-up example to illustrate each step.
Answer the question: "Why are you doing a science fair project?"
Are you competing to win prizes, trying to learn something new, or do you need to do a project for school? With the answer to this question, you can pick a topic and difficulty level that will make the project fun and interesting without being overwhelming.
Pick a topic
Your topic needs to keep you interested enough to follow through and complete the work. You also need the topic to be reasonable -- you want to be finish the project on time and to be able to understand it. A good rule of thumb is to come up with a Yes/No question in science, and try to answer it with your project.
Our sample project will try to answer the question "Do sunflowers grow differently in acid-rain water than in pure water?"
Come up with a hypothesis
Take the question from your topic and make an educated guess at the answer. Do your best to back up your guess with some reasoning, preferably from a source such as an encyclopedia.
For our sunflower experiment, we hypothesize that "The more acidic the water that sunflowers drink, the less they will grow." We reason that since pollution makes people and animals sick, we expect pollution such as acidity in the sunflowers' drinking water will make them sick too.
Design an experiment to test your hypothesis
This is the most difficult part of the project. You must come up with an experiment that will verify your hypothesis with the least possibility for error and uncertainty. In other words, think about what would happen if you performed the experiment and got some results. Would those results let you decide whether your hypothesis was correct? If so, then you have designed a good experiment. Another important point: once you have designed an experiment, STICK TO IT without changing the plan midway through. If you find your experiment is really not working, you need to design a new experiment and start over.
To eliminate uncertainty and error, most experiments need a control. The control is the base-case situation. All of the situations you test are compared to the control. When creating situations that are different from the control, you should only change the factors you are testing for; the rest of the factors should be identical. You need to state exactly what you are changing, and this usually involves a number.
Our Sunflower Experiment:
To test how acidity in water affects sunflower growth, we design the following experiment. We will grow five sunflowers for 60 days. Each day we will water the sunflowers twice, once at 8 am and once at 4 pm. Every day, we will measure each flower's height in centimeters. Each of the five flowers will get water with a different acidity level that we measure in pH. Each flower will receive the same pH water every day. In other words, the first flower will receive acid free water twice a day for 60 days, the second flower will receive slightly acidic water for 60 days, and so on.
The control in this experiment will be the first flower which receives pure water each day. We measure the pH of bottled spring water and see that its pH is 7.0 (Neutral). Noting that lower pH means more acidic, We decide we will create four other levels of acidity. The second flower will receive water with pH 6.5 every day, the third flower will receive water with pH 6.0, the fourth flower will receive water with pH 5.5, and the fifth flower will receive water with pH 5.0 every day.
The only factor we are changing for the other four flowers is the acidity of the water. They all are grown in the same type of soil, they all receive equal amounts of sunlight, and they are all the same species of flower. This way, any differences in growth we observe are probably due to the acidity of the water.
Note how this experiment design meets the criteria for a good experiment. If we had results that showed flowers growing less if they drink more acidic water, we know that acid-rain makes sunflowers grow less than pure water. If all of the flowers grow the same regardless of the water, then we know that our hypothesis was wrong because acidity in the water does not affect plant growth.
Do the experiment and record the results
The only way to get a scientifically sound answer to your question is to record accurate, objective data for your experiments. This means taking numerical measurements such as height or weight, and not recording interpretations such as "Grew better" or "Looked worse."
Here is some sample (but fictitous) data for the sunflower experiment:
Sample Data Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 ..... Day 60 pH 7.0 20.0 cm 20.5 cm 21.1 cm 21.5 cm ..... 48.2 cm pH 6.5 20.0 cm 20.1 cm 20.3 cm 20.7 cm ..... 40.9 cm pH 6.0 20.0 cm 20.0 cm 20.1 cm 20.6 cm ..... 34.2 cm pH 5.5 20.0 cm 20.0 cm 20.0 cm 20.2 cm ..... 25.2 cm pH 5.0 20.0 cm 20.0 cm 20.0 cm DEAD ..... DEAD
Examine the results, and see whether they verify your hypothesis
Look at the numbers you recorded and see whether your hypothesis was correct. To get a definite yes or no, the numbers you record need to have some significant differences. If the answer is unclear in you data, that is okay from a scientific standpoint (you would just need to say so in your presentation) but it is a little disappointing. With luck, you picked an experiment that will answer your question one way or the other.
For our data, we see that after 60 days the pure water flower grew to 48.2 centimeters, while the pH 5.5 flower grew to 25.2 centimeters and the pH 5.0 flower died after 4 days. We can conclude that "Yes" acidity in water does affect the growth of sunflowers. In fact, the more acidic the water, the less the sunflowers will grow, and if there is too much acid in the water, the flowers will die.
Present the results
Most science fair projects end with a visual display that says what you did and what you found out. A large poster board will usually work well. The idea is to present your experiment in an easy to read and eye-catching fashion. See some sample displays and look at some excellent hints on how to make a display.
The information you want to include in the display is:
A title for your project with your name and the date. The question you tried to answer with your experiment, and a sentence or two saying why you picked that question. Your hypothesis, and why you chose your hypothesis.
A short overview of your experiment. Try to sum up the experiment in either one or two brief paragraphs, or in a list format. A summary of your data. This should definitely include charts, graphs, and pictures. Your conclusion about the data. Say how you think the experiment answered your question. Along with your poster board display, if you can bring in any part of the experiment, that usually helps too.