I was a judge at one of the ISEF fairs a few years ago. At ISEF, there are many categories, not just “science.” I was judging in the Physics category. The winner in each category is determined by a multi-round voting system, where the contestant’s scores are raised and lowered by show or hands, after each judge has a chance to make a pitch. On the first round, the contestant that had the highest score was the obvious one- a highly polished, very involved experiment using a whole lab full of sophisticated equipment. But, I argued that what they had done was much more about engineering than actual science (they were replicating someone else’s results). I suggested that one of the middle-ranked entries was actually far more interesting. It was a series of experiments into the properties of “anti-bubbles”, which are drops of different-density liquid in water. I maintained that this was much closer to pure science, where he was studying and documenting an unusual phenomenon.
There is a saying: it’s important to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.
If the data disprove the hypothesis, it’s time to realize you need to re-examine the theory and look for a better explanation. Not likely to happen at high school science fair level… and often much above.
It has been said that bad old theories only die when their proponents do… luminiferous ether, for example…
Not that anybody asked, but if you know a kid who is looking for an idea for a science project, I recommend tackling the Monty Hall Problem. Viz, you are given three doors and told to pick one. Two have donkeys, one has a new Lamborghini. You make your choice, and the host opens one of the remaining doors, reveals the donkey behind it, and asks if you want to change your mind. Should you?
Yes, you should, because math. I’ll leave it to Junior how to simulate this experiment, but hint: Mythbusters did it basically with paper and pencil.
Not sure if I can find it again, but I actually read a published, apparently peer reviewed paper (admittedly in a journal I’d never heard of) last year which claimed that a specific plant species which produces unusually variable leaf shapes could vary those shapes to mimic the leaf shapes of nearby plants, even if those plants were made of plastic. It was somewhat light on details and data.
I never judged a science fair, but I did judge similar history projects in a similar fair type atmosphere. The first thing I would try to remember is these are kids and set your expectations accordingly. i.e. They’re not graduate students. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t expect good work, just that you shouldn’t judge them by the standards you might an adult.
When judging their projects, I’d make sure to take the time to get a good look at their project. What’s their hypothesis? What was their experiment? Were their controls valid? Do they have a conclusion? I typically looked at what the student’s thesis was and whether they had sources to back it up. Again, my expectations for high school students wasn’t the same was it was for a graduate student.
I’d also make it a point to speak with the student. They took the time to put together a project and made themselves available, and I feel it’d be disrespectful not to engage with them. I would typically start by asking some ice breaker questions and move into the subject of their project. Then I’d tell them exactly what I liked about their project and if I had any constructive criticism I’d talk about that as well. Again, these are kids, so I was very careful about any criticism I had and try to frame it in an encouraging way. For the events I judged, I typically only dealt with finalist from various districts and I can’t recall any project that was bad.
As @Dorjan said, it’s important you understand how science works if you’re going to judge a science fair. You don’t need to be an expert in everything, but understanding the scientific method works is necessary.
If they do in fact reach and publish this conclusion in their project, that’s all I’m looking for when judging the project. They will not receive fewer points for having a hypothesis that did not bear out if they followed the SM, analyzed, and published the data properly. They will walk away with a lesson learned in how science should work.
In my experience, most often, when the judges are circulating around the projects, most of the students are in class. They’re usually not standing in front of their presentation board at that time.
Yup. So the whole thing is often just a pretence of ‘teaching science’.
I guess the problem is that a lot of ‘science’ teachers don’t really understand it themselves, they are just parotting ‘facts’ that mean very little to them. They have no idea of the fun of ‘finding out’, as Feynman put it…
I don’t see how that follows. Most real science, when it’s presented, the scientist isn’t standing by right there to answer questions. If they did a good job in their report, they probably don’t need to be there.
That’s surprising to hear. In every science fair I’ve ever participated in both as a student and as a judge or organizer, the student has always been at their board to present to the judges.
This is certainly true at the middle school level and even to some degree still at the high school level: What some students are presenting are simply demonstrations of some phenomenon or some law. And while those are sometimes very well done and show individual effort, they are not science.What you want to ask is Where did the question come from? How did you design the experiment the way you did? What would you do differently if you were trying to answer the question again? Treat them like scientists.
I think it’s a matter of ease of planning. There are times when the students are available, and there are times when each judge is available, and there might not be much overlap between those. By not requiring the students to be present, they can have each judge coming in at whatever time is convenient for them over the span of the few days that the displays are up.
Most real science isn’t presented via posterboard. Of the times it is, when I’ve been to poster sessions, the authors absolutely are there to answer any questions or there’s a clear way to contact them and the expectation is if you’re interested in the poster, you reach out to them to ask them questions.
This is in contrast with an academic paper where the format absolutely is supposed to be self contained and there’s no expectation that you must be able to reach out to the author to obtain crucial information.
Right, I didn’t phrase that very well. I didn’t mean that the student not being at the presentation make it a pretence. I meant that the whole ‘science project’ / ‘science fair’ charade is all too often just a feelgood exercise.
There’s usually a typed-up paper sitting on the table in front of the board with more details. The poster doesn’t need to carry the whole project. Which is also generally true of poster sessions at conferences: There will be times when the authors are there, but the posters stay up for the whole conference, and the authors will want to attend sessions, too. So they’ll leave preprints on the table, or put a QR code with a link to the preprint on the poster.
Sometimes, sure. But do you have a particular reason for saying that?
Just experience with the ones our kids were involved in. As I’ve said, in a lot of cases it was painfully obvious that the ‘good’ entries had been done largely or completely by the parents.
It could be argued that the children of such parents are likely to absorb some scientific knowledge and attitude from the parents. But that’s more about the home environment than the ‘project’ process itself. And sometimes the suggested topics were way out of the league of high school science.
I’m sure a lot of these projects and fairs are well-intentioned, but I’m sceptical about how useful they are for teaching scientific knowlege and method.
But this is not a hill I am going to die on; I don’t want to get into any sort of acrimonious debate…
That’s a good point; the student might have an excellent hypothesis and plan-of-approach (which they should get some point for), but not the time or funding to do it.
Yea, I would definingly look favorably on a student that formulates a good, creative, and original hypothesis, and then attempts to conduct a real science experiment on it.
The same can be said of just about all lab demonstrations at school level: they are not really ‘experiments’ in the real meaning of the word. Nothing actually wrong with this of course; they are an introduction to design and use of scientific apparatus. After all, one does not build a Webb telescope or an LHC without acquiring a lot of foundation in a long apprenticeship.