Tom Brown, Ph.D. ,  Associate Professor of Science Education

It's all about Ideas      

Great science fair projects depend on creative, thoughtful, and original ideas. You should choose a topic that you'll really enjoy and not something that just sounds easy.  If you can think of a problem that is related your topic, then you have the beginning of an excellent project.  The goal of the project should to develop a potential solution to your problem and then test and see whether or not your solution is effective.

Check out the following links for help in forming and developing your ideas:

And if you want ideas for a specific ages, here are some helpful links:

The Scientific Method :

 In order to guide and direct their work, most students use a "tool" commonly known as the scientific method.  This method provides us with an organized way to think through and then test the potential solutions to a problem.  To simplify the process, we often break down the parts of this process into a number of individual steps. They include:

1. Problem - Identify a problem that interests you and can be tested.      

2. Research - Collect information about your problem from your experiences, books, articles, experts, and the Internet.

3. Hypothesis -  Form a  hypothesis - an idea (explanation) about the solution to the problem that is based on your knowledge and research.

4. Experiment - The experiment is the part of the process that allows you to test your hypothesis.   The factors that have an effect on the experiment are called variables.  The variables that you need to identify are the independent variable, the dependent variable, and controlled variables.

5. Conclusions - In your conclusion, you summarize the results of your experiment and describe how the results relate to your hypothesis (explanation).

For a much more detailed description of the scientific method and a step-by-step details to help you proceed with your project , check out the following websites.

Remember that the best projects result from an exploration of your own ideas. Be creative and don't be afraid to "think out of the box."