What can I do to increase my chances of winning first place at a science fair?

 Winning science fair projects do not just happen by chance, they require a significant amount of work. If this is your first time entering a science fair, or even your fourth time entering a science fair, chances are you want to know what you can do to increase your odds of winning. Fortunately there is a simple formula that you can use to improve the value of your science fair project and thereby improve your chances of winning a science fair.

 The most important thing that you will need to do is to come up with a project idea that is viewed by the judges as valuable. The value of a science fair project idea is based on its uniqueness, its innovativeness, its applicability to modern concerns and its format. A good way to ensure that your science fair project topic is valuable is to select a general science concept to work with and then to ask questions about the topic that relate to these value factors to produce a winning project idea.

Topic: Wind Energy

 Question: What is a unique issue related to wind energy?

Answer: Generally wind energy science fair projects focus on the design of a windmill generator. In order to get away from concepts and issues that hundreds of other students are working with you will need to focus on issues such as how do windfarms impact ecosystems, how clean is wind energy, how efficient is wind energy compared to hydroelectric energy and can wind energy be stored.

Question: How can wind energy be innovative?

Answer: To answer this question, students will need to explore how wind energy technology and science can be applied to solve current or future problems. For example, can wind energy technology be applied to space stations in order to generate energy using solar wind, or can wind energy technology be scaled down so that it is not as obstructive?

Question: How can wind energy be applied to modern problems?

 Answer: This question is really a focusing question that will help students to develop their hypothesis and experiment. Here the student will need to identify a current problem, such as pollution, energy shortages or energy costs to focus on. Next the topic will need to be applied to solving that problem. For example, the science fair project can focus on developing a low cost windmill generator that can power a home for less than it costs to power it using community utilities.

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Credit of the image to the left goes to the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.

Soybean plants growing in high carbon dioxide environments have denser canopies that can result in more disease problems. This seedling is showing signs of brown spot on its lower leaves. (

University of Illinois researchers are studying the impact of elevated carbon dioxide, elevated ozone and higher atmospheric temperatures on plant diseases that could challenge crops in these changing conditions.

So what brings to mind a science fair project that you can do that will influence your community to make shifts in the use of their cars, air conditioning and other pollutants?

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What is the Big Bang? Cosmologists use the term Big Bang to refer to the idea that the universe was originally extremely hot and dense at some finite time in the past and has since cooled by expanding to the present diluted state and continues to expand today. Wikipedia.

What brought on the liquid theory is that in 2004 scientist smashed gold ions into each other at nearly the speed of light. To their surprise the gold turned into liquid.

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What was truly interesting is that the paleontologists were able to establish a correlation between this ratio and the average temperatures in modern ecosystems which enabled them to predict, within 1 degree C, which is almost better than what modern meteorology technology can produce.

How can you use this information to come up with your own earth science fair experiments? Well first of all you can see if this ratio really is a good predictor of average annual temperatures. You can start by replicating the experiment using the plants found in your local area.

You will need to collect as many leaves as possible and then divide them into smooth edged and toothed edge specimens. Find the ratio of smoothed to toothed edge leaves and then compare them to the ratio that was developed by the paleontologists.

Finding correlations between modern ecosystems and ancient ecosystems is just one way in which we learn about ancient environments. Use what you have learned from the above example to develop your own paleontology or paleon botany science fair projects. Start by gathering information about your local ancient history.

Try to find fossil sites near your house. You will be surprised at how many plant fossils you can find and how many invertebrate fossils you can find along the highway. Collect samples and try to put together a model of what your ecosystem looked like during the last ice age, or during the time of the dinosaurs.

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