Scientific Method | Preparing Your Project

The Scientific Method, aka doing research the scientific way
First, you must come up with your Purpose and Hypothesis.
The Purpose is why you are doing the project, what you want to answer, or the problem you are trying to solve. You want to state your purpose clearly. One of the best ways to state your purpose is in the form of a question your experiment will answer. For example, “Does the type of salt affect the melting point of ice?” or “How does darkness affect the growth rate of various molds?” HINT: Ask a few adults whose judgment you trust to read your purpose and see if each understands it.
The Hypothesis is what you think your experiment will do or what you want to prove. For example, “I think potassium chloride will lower the melting point of ice more than sodium chloride” or “I think increased darkness will slow down the growth rate of mold”. Remember, it’s less important that your hypothesis is proven correct than how well-designed your experiment is!

Next, you design your Procedure.

Before doing any experimenting, you should do Background Research. You should try to know as much as possible about what you are trying to accomplish. That way, you design a better experiment. Gather your information from books, magazines, pamphlets, newspapers, videos, television, people, and the Internet. Document the title and author; date it was published or broadcast; and company (e.g., publisher, TV station, website address, video producer). HINT: This is your bibliography! We’ll get to that when we talk about putting your project together. You should also find out what scientists and engineers who study your area of experimentation say about your project. Ask them, but do it AFTER you have learned enough about your project to ask intelligent or appropriate questions. HINT: You can find these people at local companies, hospitals, colleges and universities, and professional organizations. If you are not sure where to go, ask an adult or contact the GSSSF.

Yeah, now you get to do the Experiment! This is the heart of your project, so plan your experiment carefully. Get approval from an adult before beginning your experiment, even if you are doing it at home. If you are doing any research that requires you to get pre-approval by a Scientific Review Committee, it’s probably a good idea to have an adult present during your experimentation. Keep a log book of all your experimentation and accurately record all your results, even those you think “don’t fit.” An important part of doing experiments is to be able to make accurate comparisons, so whenever possible, use a duplicate set-up called a CONTROLLED EXPERIMENT. Create another set-up just like the one you are using, except for the factor you are testing. For example, potassium chloride and sodium chloride are different about the amounts would be the same as well as the amount and starting temperature of ice and the temperature of the surrounding air or the amount and temperature of the mold would be the same but the number of hours spent in darkness would be different. Controlled experiments are often used in scientific research. You may also want to do your experiment more than once. These are called trials and the more trials you do, the more accurate your results may be. With your experiment, you’ll collect data, compare your data with theoretical results or a controlled experiment, and compare your data to your hypothesis.

And, finally you get to figure out your Results and make your Conclusions.
The Results are what data you collected and what you are able to learn from the data.
The Conclusion is what your results mean and how your results compare with your hypothesis. If your results and your hypothesis don’t match, you may want to discuss why. If your results gave you any ideas for future projects, you may want to discuss that too.

Preparing Your Project - back to top
Now that you have done your research, you’ll want to communicate it to the WORLD! OK, maybe just our small part of it. To communicate effectively, you’ll need to create an Exhibit and a Presentation. Judges consider your display, your presentation, your ability to answer questions about your research, and how well you understand the scientific or engineering principle behind your research when choosing award recipients.

Your Exhibit includes your Display, an Abstract, and a Written Report.

• Your Display should include all the parts of the Scientific Method used in your research. Below is a graphic provided by Science Buddies to show how to arrange the display board. Make sure you read the section on Exhibit Requirements in Fair Day Information. There may be things you can’t bring to the science fair. Photographs of your project can be very useful. They can supply data and proof that your project existed, just in case it blows up the day before or the plants you fed special chemicals to decide to die or the project is too big for the space provided.
  

• The Abstract is a summary of your project that is usually 1-2 paragraphs long. Judges like to collect abstracts so that they can remember more about your project as they are thinking about it after the judging period. You may want to bring 10 copies with you on fair day.
• Your Written Report documents your research. Everything you have written about your research is polished here. This includes the bibliography of your background research. Document the title and author; date it was published or broadcast; and company (e.g., publisher, TV station, website address, video producer). Be specific! For example, Google is not an appropriate listing if it is the search engine you used and not the web site you found information on. Your Log Book, as messy as it may be, should also be included since this is where you documented all your results as they happened.

Your Presentation is your verbal interaction with judges and other people interested in your research. Greet the judges, shake their hands or do whatever else you need to do to feel connected to the judge and less nervous. Typically, you will spend about 10-15 minutes with each judge. Be prepared to talk about your research first--how and why you chose your topic, your background research, your experimentation and your results. HINT: Practicing this in advance with adults you are comfortable with can help you improve your presentation. The judge then initiates a question-and-answer conversation. Feel free to ask the judge to clarify any question you do not understand. Remember that a judge considers it more important that you learned something about your project than how flawlessly the experiment went.