Science Fair ideas and judging

I got the opportunity to judge science fair projects of 5-8th graders in my daughter's school. I wanted to see the ideas that the kids came up with and how they presented. A more personal motive was to see what my daughter will be getting in to next year when she would be in 5th grade!

Here are the guidelines on what a judge looks for while judging a science project. They have been derived from the evaluation sheet that was provided to us.

1. Has the student done enough research?
2. Is the topic of the project clearly understood and communicated?
3. Are the scientific principles on which the project is based clear to the student?
4. Is the student aware of the real world application of the project?
5. Has the student done enough iteration of his/her experiment to get a reliable data?
6. Has the student adhered to scientific method if he/she has experimented and made sure that there is only one variable at a time?
7. In case of demonstration projects, has the student created a proper model to demonstrate the scientific principle?
8. Has the student given thought to/is aware of alternatives in his/ her project (For ex. if a project uses microwave radiation, how does it compare with the UV radiation)?
9. Has the student put enough efforts on his/her board, do they have pictures that support their efforts if they don't have a model or experiment?
10. Is the student confident?

Following are some of the projects that I got to judge:

• UV rays and bacteria
• How does the caffeine affect the blood pressure
• Making breads
• Plants and the distance between them
• Microwave and plants (how microwave can affect the germination)
• Cloning
• Do plants store excess glucose as starch?
• What shape of the car causes less wind resistance?
• Water purification
• Can handsoap and dishwashing soaps be used instead of detergent
• Testing hardening of plants
• What angle of the windmill blade generates is optimum for generation of electricity
• Magnetic field to generate electricity
• Diabetes

The general trend that I observed was that the lower grade kids (5th and 6th) had taken up complicated topics and most of them were demonstrations. Having done an experiment project last year and a demonstration project this year with my daughter, I figured out that latter is slightly difficult since you need to come up with ideas to present the model. On the contrary the higher grades(7th and 8th) mostly chose experiment projects. Most of these were not as complicated for their level.

Recently I had read an article about the plight of science in the schools and that made me think that parents really need to take initiative to get their kids interested in science. It is an interest that can be cultivated!