A science fair judge's perspective...
I've been a category judge at the Santa Clara Valley Science and Engineering Fair for many years. I've judged projects by 6th graders through seniors in a broad number of different categories, and it's been my experience that the science projects which are primarily conceived and executed by the students almost always do better in the judging than those projects which had heavy parental involvement in coming up with the original idea or in the execution of the project. Students who own their projects are, in general, much more motivated and enthusiastic about doing the work and are also much more knowledgeable about the results they achieved.
When judging, we look for projects which the students conceived. It's usually quite easy to see the projects which either came out of some book of Science project recipes (101 Science Fair Projects For Kids!) or were foisted onto the students by their parents. Those projects don't do well, because they don't showcase the student's scientific thought, talent, and creativity. The from-the-book projects show someone else's creativity. The heavy parental involvement projects show the parents' skills, not the students. Believe me, this rapidly comes out in the student interviews at the fair.
A good science fair project isn't a vehicle to teach a student facts, it's a vehicle for them to discover something new for themselves.
A good science fair project usually isn't a straight path from getting the "right" initial hypothesis to setting up an experiment to collecting the perfect data to drawing the expected conclusion. Good science fair projects have messy data, twists and turns to the conclusion, etc. They also, however, have students who understand why the errors exist and can explain how those errors came to be and how they effect the conclusions.
One of the best science fair projects I ever judged was one in which the student (6th grader) started with a "I wonder why" question. The student developed a reasonable hypothesis, and came up with a set of experiments to test it. The experiments were executed well and the data was recorded and analyzed nicely. Unfortunately for the student, the data and results completely discounted the hypothesis. No other conclusion was possible; the hypothesis was completely false. Despite being told by his poor excuse of a science teacher that his project wouldn't do well at the fair because he got the "wrong" result, the student won his category. Why? Because he did real science. He went where the data took him and understood what it meant. He wasn't wedded to the hypothesis needing to be right. He clearly understood the why of what happened. He was able to explain and identify the errors and sources of errors in his data and discuss improvements to his experimental methodology. In short, he did real science, not some project from a book which is all laid out nicely, and definitely not some project done more by his parents than by him. He experienced the messiness that real science is, and he was passionate about what he did because it was his idea, not someone else's. It was great work.
The approach that seems to work best as a parent to science fair project is this:
- Look for those moments when the student asks a "why" question. Those why questions are ripe with science fair possibilities.,
- Instead of directly answering the why question, try this method: "I don't know, but I can help you find out why..."
- Help identify some resources for the student to do some reading on the issue.
- Then, ask some "Why" and "How would you" questions of your own to get them started on how they will do the project.
- Stay away from the "This is how it should be done", or "This is how I would do it". Let them create their hypothesis, let them create the experiment, let them take the data, let them analyze the results, and let them OWN the project.
- Be a resource available to them, but stay away from giving them answers.
- Remember always that this is the student's project, not yours. Your kid's interests may not be your own. Accept that!
Remember, it's not important for the student to get THE right answer
(meaning some pre-determined result or answer that we know they should have gotten), it's important for the student to do good science and find an answer which is supported by their data. The important thing is for the student to be able to clearly explain how they got the result they did, and why the data does or does not support their original hypothesis. They should themselves be able to identify sources of error and understand suggest ways to improve going forward. That's science. Having the most "novel" or unique project at the fair means nothing if it was the parent's project and not the student's.
Oh, and the "glitter" that someone else mentioned? That doesn't impress either. A clear, neat presentation of the work? That's what impresses.
Having said all of that, my son did his 7th grade science fair project on wing aspect ratios. This was after he commented after going to an airshow about the wings of a sailplane vs the wings of a fighter. "Daddy, why do gliders have wings like that?" "I don't know, son, let's see if we can find out..."
He built about 4 or 5 different balsa wood gliders. Each had the same wing area, the same stick fuselage shape, and the same horizontal and vertical tail shape. He kept the weight the same and the CG the same distance from the tail on each glider. One glider had wings which had a 1 inch chord and a wing span of about 24 inches. At the other extreme, the glider had a chord of 6 inches and a span of 4 inches. All the wings were rectangular. He learned quite a bit. The high aspect ratio glider flew quite a long way without much of a launch speed, but required calm air. At higher launch speed, the wings tended to rip off. The low aspect ratio glider flew well also, but required a stronger throw and flew faster. It penetrated turbulent air well, and it could withstand a really hard throw.
