I signed up to be one. 9th and 10th grade. Have never been one before. Am looking for advice on what to look for. Proper execution of the the scientific method? Creative approaches? Good data analysis? Or perhaps how hard they worked?
When I did it, my primary evaluation standard was that they actually did science (ask a question and answer it through experimentation). So many were just copy this thing out of a book like making crystals.
I’ve done it a few times at two different schools, and the organizers have always given out rubric sheets, where you have a number of questions where you give each a score of 1-4 or so, and then total up all of the points.
All I know is, extra points if the lava is made out of chocolate.
Something that wasn’t explained to me when I was a kid – Science Fair projects are supposed to be actual science experiments executed in such way as to show understanding of the scientific method, data collection, and analysis. And originality. It’s not supposed to be vinegar and baking soda volcanos and the like.
I jusged a science fair when I was a grad student, and I looked for tose kinds of things. So the student who submitted what was blatantly a piece of pseudoscience got no points. I think I was most impressed by the student who did a study of “acid snow”. Acid Rain was much in nthe news, but this was the first I’d heard of acid snow. And the high school was in Park City, Utah (where there’s a ski lift that goes to the top of the mountain from Main Street), so snow is a major deal in their life. The student did a good job of measuring the pH in various locations and correlating the data.
When I judged a couple of times (decades ago) the students stood right beside their projects to answer questions. I’d always ask “How would you take this further?” Those who had obviously thought beyond their submission got extra points.
I remember one boy whose display wasn’t nearly as attractive as some others, but it was apparent that he’d not had help from any adults. Some of the judges discounted his because it wasn’t pretty. But when I asked where he’d go next, he had a clear and logical approach for a follow-on. Based on that, I was able to convince the other judges that he deserved an award, and I hope that was encouragement enough for him to continue to pursue science.
Ah, science fairs and projects. The bane of our lives when our kids were in high school.
It was very obvious looking at the entries that the vast majority of ones that were any good were actually done by the parents. Which rather defeats the object.
If I were a judge, a top priority would be to try to discern how much of the project was really done by the child. Are you allowed to talk to the entrants as part of the process?
I’ve judged many science fairs, and even ran one for a few years.
At the high school level, you are going to come across a huge range of understanding of the scientific (or engineering) method. My #1 advice is that you should have a very good understanding of it yourself, and if you do not, consider not serving as a judge. The bane of my existence were always volunteer judges with a very shaky understanding of the scientific method or engineering method who tended to reward the kids who showed the most enthusiasm or prettiest presentations. Even with a rubric, it’s hard to score a kid on whether their research and data analysis used proper controls if you don’t really understand what that means yourself. For the fairs that I ran, I always recruited my judges from working engineers, researchers, and post-graduate students.
My elementary school Science fair was judged (or maybe just emceed) by famed local weatherman George Fishbeck. I don’t think he was impressed by my shell collection nor with the homemade mechanical calculator supposedly built by a 4th grader.
I think one criterion should be examination of experiment outcomes as supported by real science, not “alternative facts” science.
A few years ago, when our local high school had a science fair, one exhibit by two girls claimed to prove that green plants can read English and will act appropriately, i.e., telling the plant that it was ugly resulted in less growth than telling it (on a printed sticker) that it was beautiful.
I kid you not. There are so many ways this “study” was flawed, starting at the gross assumption that plants had such facilities as optical vision and recognition of human language.
What I found most disturbing was the benign approval of the teacher-sponsor, who saw nothing wrong with the exhibit, and didn’t feel it was necessary to step in and assist the students.
And no, this is not a “I heard it from a friend”-- type story. I have the evidence on video of the girls explaining their exhibit to a credulous interviewer and public.
Holy crap! I hope they were given an award that meant “this will serve as acknowledgment that you have submitted an entry to the science fair” and no more. That exhibit shouldn’t even have counted for participation.
Sounds like they were inspired by actual research on whether sound vibrations from speech (mild vs harsh) affects plant growth, and put their own spin on it in a scientifically unsound way.
Right. This is why we are becoming a world of scientific illiterates. Great marks for trying, and “you’re special Just Because you’re You”.
Stupidity is the only universal capital offence. Ignorance CAN be cured by education.
But as with that ‘teacher’: the blind leading the blind.
You seem to be a kind and generous person… but… I don’t think so!
This was pretty much presented as scientific fact by teachers and popular culture when I was a kid in the 1970s. I don’t fault the girls for their experiment; just their conclusions.
The girls used printed stickers pasted on the pots, so sound wasn’t a factor, unless they claimed that the plants were reading the text to each other.
Blind leading the blind. We are in a swamp of scientific illiteracy.
It’s a social and economic problem of course: we don’t pay teachers properly. So anyone who has any scientific or engineering skills can make more money elsewhere. As Carl Sagan said, this will blow up in our faces eventually.
A good portion of the crackpottery of the 1970s came from scientists.
You mean things like the ‘Dancing Wu Li Masters’ etc? Well, I guess they sold a lot of books.
But most of that stuff came from soi-disant writers who had no real academic training or credentials.
And some really qualified physicists do like to riff a bit… but they know the difference between speculation and supported facts and theories.
I don’t mind crackpot theories in science fair projects - they can be interesting and fun. The important thing is that the experiment is well-designed, the scientific method is followed, and that conclusions are based on the data, whether they support the hypothesis or not. That’s the whole point of these things: that the students learn and understand the importance of the method. Obviously, plants can’t read words of affirmation, but with a bit of guidance from the teacher, that plant project could have been done in an interesting and measurable way.