ScienceScience Project? I need to make a model what? I'm a mum on my own and I have no idea what to do when the kids utter those horrible words "Mum I have a science project due tomorrow." How long have you known this? Last week. Sound familiar? Luckily I found a great site with heaps of ideas and solutions. Don't search anymore. I found it for you.
Author: Shawn Carlson, Ph.D. Article:First you found a killer Your written report is the single most important part of any So when developing your report, here's a little friendly advicefrom a guy who once had over a million monthly readers inScientific American magazine. Know this! Writing is all about communicating ideas clearly.Your goal should be for the information that you present to floweffortlessly from the page into the reader's mind without thereader's head ever snapping back. Your readers should absorbyour prose effortlessly as fast as their brains can decipher thewords. In fact, your readers should loose track of the fact thatthey are in fact reading. Their focus should be entirely on theinformation they are taking in, and not on the text itself. Ittakes a lot of practice to become a good writer, and you aren'tgoing to master the art overnight. But here are a few tips foryou to focus on that will help you find your voice and keep youraudience. First, and I can't stress this enough, always always alwayswrite in clear declarative sentences. Take another look at thepreceding paragraph. Can you see how short and clear thesentences are? The topic sentence isn't even a real sentence.It's a fragment, a two-word command. But it grabs your attentionand pulls you in, just as any good topic sentence should. Eachidea thereafter flows naturally into the next. This is how youshould strive to write every paragraph of your science fairproject report. Whatever you do, don't overwork your sentences! Each sentenceshould contain just one complete idea. Too many run-on sentencesread like the writer let him/herself be swept away in their ownstream of consciousness. Was the writer was too lazy to thinkabout what he or she was trying to say, or too ignorant to knowhow to communicate it clearly? Either way, run-on sentences willdefinitely impress the judges... in all the ways you don't wantto. Next, and I know plenty of bad writers disagree with me, but forgoodness sake, avoid passive voice like the plague it is! Yes, Iknow that virtually every science paper ever written is cloggedthick with passive sentences, but that's not style. It's proofthat most professional scientists couldn't find a good sentencewith two hands and a flashlight. Sad to say, most scientists areabsolutely terrible writers who, comparing their work only toother terrible writers, have convinced themselves that they areactually pretty good. They feel fully competent to ignore theadvice of Pulitzer Prize winners who say the same think that Iam telling you now. Don't fall into that trap! Everyone whoknows how to write hates passive voice, decries passive voiceand struggles against passive voice at every opportunity. Why?Because passive voice is mind-numbingly boring! Readers ofresearch papers must hack their way through these tangledmorasses like intrepid explorers bulling their way through anearly impenetrable jungle. Who wants to work that hard? Trustme. If you rely too much on passive voice, few science fairjudges will have the stamina to find whatever gold you may havehidden deep inside your science fair project report. So, instead of "This project was undertaken to ..." consider "Iundertook this project to..." Instead of "The data weretaken..." try "I (or we) took the data..." on for size. Reducing passive voice in your science fair project report andwriting in clear declarative sentences is a wonderful way toseparate yourself from the herd. To stand above the crowd. Toget noticed.
Here's something you probably didn't know. The word "data" isplural! If you need the singular form then the word you arelooking for is "datum". A datum is the product of a singlemeasurement. Data is a collection of two or more datum. Dataisn't an "it." Data is a "they." "The data shows" is incorrect.A datum shows (singular verb) something, but the data show(plural verb) it. The correct usage of data and datum is a hugepet peeve for some science fair judges. Getting this rightconsistently throughout your science fair project report willbring approving smiles to the faces of many judges, especiallythe curmudgeons. And believe me, a happy curmudgeon can be agood friend to have in a close competition! And please please please reserve jargon only for those instanceswhen jargon is actually appropriate. I've read hundreds ofscience fair project reports (and at least as many professionalresearch papers) in which the writers believed they could hidetheir ignorance or poor technique behind a smoke screen ofobtuse language. Being difficult to understand doesn't make yourwriting sound deep any more than smoking makes you look like anadult. Believe me, science fair judges know all the tricks, andwe can spot smoke signals miles away. Verbal puffery is a suresign of a report that doesn't got da goods! So use only clean,clear and direct language. Finally, don't be cute! Science writing doesn't have much"personality" because scientists like it that way. Jokes andwitticisms or clever word plays almost always make it harder tosee the science in your paper. (The science fair student whoexplained that his experiment had proved a certain commonly helpopinion to be "Taurus feces" didn't get high marks in my book,or anyone else's. He would have done much better if he hadsimply said that his results were consistent with the nullhypothesis and therefore inconsistent with the commonly heldopinion he was testing.) Oh, one more thing. Your science fair project report needs tohave the following parts: * Title Page: Must include your science fair project's title,your name and contact information (address and school), yourgrade and the name of your science teacher. * Table of Contents: Include the page numbers for the beginningof each section. * Introduction: The Introduction includes your clearlyformulated and testable hypothesis, as well as explanation ofyour idea, how you got it and why you think the work isinteresting. (If don't think your experiment is interesting,give up now. You have no hope of doing a good project! So lookaround until you find something that interests you!) Alsoinclude what you hoped to achieve when you started the project. * Experiment: Describe in detail the method you used to collectyour data and organize your observations. Your report should bedetailed enough for anyone to be able to repeat your experimentby just reading the paper, so keep this fact in mind when youwrite it. It's always a good idea to include detailedphotographs or clearly-labeled drawings of any device you madeto carry out your research. * Discussion: This is where you explain the exact process bywhich you reached your conclusions. This section should flowlogically so that the reader can easily follow your train ofthought. Compare your data with the null hypothesis (that is,what would you have expected if the observations you made werecompletely unrelated to he effect you were expecting), or toyour predicted results. What you would do differently if youwere to do this project again? * Conclusion: Summarize your results. Make sure not to introduceanything that wasn't already mentioned in the previous parts ofyour paper. * Acknowledgments: In this section you should give credit toeveryone who assisted you. This may include individuals,businesses and educational or research institutions. Identifyany financial support or material donations you may havereceived. * References: This list should include any documentation that isnot your own, such as books or articles, that you used. For theaccepted format, see the rules for your particular science faircompetition. If the rules don't specify a preference, then finda research journal that publishes articles in the area of yourexperiment, and copy the format that it uses. About the author:Dr. Shawn (Shawn Carlson, Ph.D.) is a physicist and MacArthurFellow who has devoted his life to helping ordinary people doextraordinary science. He is the Founder and Executive Directorof the Society for Amateur Scientists, the world's largestsupport organization for citizen scientists. He is the creatorof the Labrats science education program for children ages 11 -18. He also runs Dr. Shawn's Super Science Fair Support Centerat www.scifair.org
This is a great site for general science info, projects and articles to print. Heaps of other great information as well.
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