Science Fair Tips for Success

• Choose An Exciting Topic
• Choose a topic that will interest and challenge you.
• Do not be afraid to try something new—you will learn about it along the way.
• Remember that complicated-looking projects do not guarantee a win!
• Learn Cool Theories
• After picking a topic, spend a lot of time gathering background research.
• Look for important concepts and equations that will explain how and why your experimental results turn out the way they do.
• Find equations that will help you predict the outcome of your experiment. Learn all the important math, physics, chemistry etc. in order to fully understand your project.
• Be a True Scientist
• Keep a detailed and up-to-date lab notebook with you regularly.
• It will help you organize your thoughts and if you ever need to go back to see how you did something, you can find out.
• Judges will want to see a lab notebook during the judging period.
• Trudge Onward!
• During the experiment, do not get discouraged if you run into a lot of problems.
• Do not stop if your experiment does not turn out the way you think it should.
• It's okay if your hypothesis is proved incorrect.
• Judges like to see persistence, so keep at it! Ask for advice if you need help. Judges love to talk about the problems you ran into and how you solved/tried to solve them.
• Use Your Brain (it's not as hard as it seems!)
• Look at your results and ask yourself why they do/do not make sense.
• Apply your background research to your results to help you figure out what happened during the experiment.