How to Make a Good Science Project
Here's some straightforward advice on making a good science project:
Be fresh and original. You're on the right site for that! Solar and renewable energy are still out of the ordinary and few people know that you can make a lot of renewable energy projects out of simple materials at home.
Clearly define your goal. Can you meet it realistically? Is it worthwhile?
Make sure it's your own. It's okay to get some help and some advice, but be sure that you could repeat the entire experiment on your own and that you understand everything.
Follow the scientific method if your project is an experiment.
Here's a brief summary:
- Ask a worthwhile question:
- What happens when you?
- Why does?
- How does this work?
- Make a hypothesis: write down what you expect to happen in your experiment.
- Plan your experiment: think of all the variables and ways to get varied results. What will you need? What will be your actions, step by step? What variables can you change?
- Carry out and observe. What is the best way to record your observations? What data will you record? How will you record it? Is there a better way to do your experiment? What problems did you encounter?
- Results. Plot your data, graph it, or other. Compare your observations. See if you can come up with a concise way (e.g. mathematical formula) to describe them.
- Conclusions: What did happen (compared to what you expected). Come up with best explanations. How could you improve your experiment? Was it successful?
Prove your point. Even if your experiment doesn't work out the way you hypothesized, be sure that something is proven and that you do have a proper conclusion.
Have some fun. You have to care about your project. Does it have personal meaning to you? Do you think it's really interesting?
Make sure it's clear and clean. Make everything as concise as possible. Eliminate all unnecessary data. All observations, notes, results, etc. should follow in order and never wander too far from your focus. Keep the concluding project presentation clean and neat.
Take some time to anticipate questions from judges, teachers and others.
Go back to the Solar4Scholars home page for a complete list of science projects.
