Completing A Middle School Science Project In Time

By Author: Robert Watson
Total Articles: 63
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Science fair projects are not only educational, but can be a lot of fun too. Below I offer some suggestions for how to choose a good project, how to conduct it, and how to present it to your teacher, fellow students and others.

Firstly, when it comes to choosing a project, consider not only what is appropriate for your educational level (i.e. middle school), but also what will impress your audience. It's great if you can show how a phenomenon works, but even better if you can actually use the project to demonstrate the answer to a problem. Best of all is to show how something works, provide a solution, and then suggest how your experiment may lead to other solutions. That shows you're thinking beyond the obvious - always good for impressing teachers!

What project you take on will also be confined by your environment, and what equipment, substances, etc you have at your disposal. And certainly choose something you are likely to enjoy working on. That way, you won't need the dreaded deadline to motivate you to get it done. If you're stuck for ideas, here are a few issues you may wish to explore:

1. How much ...
... of a fruit is made up of water? Find out the water percentages of fruits like oranges, lemons and watermelons.

2. How does yeast work?

3. What invisible stains lurk on household materials? Use a UV light to find stains that are invisible to the naked eye.

4. What kind of cooking destroys oxidants, vitamins, minerals, etc and what rate?

5. How does magnetism affect how plants grow?

6. What different factors cause seeds to germinate? Test things like the: intensity, duration or type of light; air temperature; the amount of water; presence or absence of certain chemicals; or soil type.

Some experiments may require you to carefully control the surroundings. If so, try to get rid of anything (or any person!) that may impact on your findings.

Also, if your project actually yields findings you didn't envisage, you may need to check whether there were some factors you hadn't taken into account. Alternatively, if everything was as it should be and the results have still diverged from what you thought would arise, that's worth discussing in your presentation.

At last, it's time to prepare your formal presentation. Be relaxed and confident. Discuss why you chose your project, what you did to conduct it, and the results. Oh, and don't forget to rehearse your presentation beforehand in front of family and friends. Practice answering questions too.

There you have some ideas about choosing, undertaking and presenting your middle school science fair project. Ideally, you'll learn a lot through your project and have a great time in the process.