The Title Page Is Usually a Restatement of Your Question, but Use Your Own Judgment Here

Science Fair Report Guidelines

The Title Page is usually a restatement of your Question, but use your own judgment here – you might need to trim something like “Does Hydrostatic Pressure within a Water Cooled Turbine Cause Metal Fatigue?” down a bit. (One page)

A Table of Contents is page that lists where each section in your report is and what’s page number is. This goes a long way to making your project look and feel professional and well done. (One page)

The Project Abstract should briefly summarize your project. It should include your hypothesis, what materials you used to conduct your experiment, how you conducted your experiment, what your results were and what your conclusions were. Don’t forget: be brief here. You will get a chance to go into more detail later in the science fair report. This should be on the official abstract form!

The Question and Hypothesis section of your science fair report will contain an explanation of the question you are posing and what your hypothesis is. Make surely to clearly state both. (At least a good “ACE”ed paragraph for each, if not more!)

The section on Topical Research should show what you learned during the research of your topic of interest and demonstrate why you choose your particular Question/Hypothesis. Since you chose a topic you like, this is a good spot to let your knowledge shine through. This is background research of your topic! (Several “ACE”ed paragraphs)

Your Experiment section will go into the details of what materials you used for your experiment and how you used them to conduct your experiment. Remember that list you made that contained your experiment procedure, the steps to do your experiment? Well, you can use that here in your science fair report! Present that step-by-step procedure here and discuss each step and why it was important to the experiment. Be detailed, and don’t leave anything out that’s of consequence to the experiment. (This is a very detailed numbered list of the steps. Refer to your research plan!)

The Results section deals with just that – just the results of your experiment. Just present the data you gathered from the experiment and do not discuss what it implies just yet. You can discuss your observations and measurements but not anything else. (At least a good “ACE”ed paragraph, if not more!)

Your Conclusion section will contain the interpretation of your results and should state whether your hypothesis (restate it here) was proved or disproved. Discuss how the experiment satisfied your Question and what you would do differently if anything. You have already done most (perhaps all) of this writing when you wrote your conclusion earlier and need to simply include it in your science fair report. (At least a few good “ACE”ed paragraphs.)

The pages that contain your Graphs and Figures section should contain any graphics that support your observations and conclusions such as the graph you made when you wrote up your conclusion. (YOU MUST HAVE A GRAPH OR CHART, SOME SORT OF PICTORAL REPRESENTATION OF DATA!)

The Bibliography section of your science fair report should cite all of your sources of information you used while making your project. Cite any encyclopedias, journals, lectures, books, or websites you may have used. (Bibliography must be done in MLA format. Use www.easybib.com for help!)

Once you have all of these sections typed up in a word processor, celebrate! Your science and writing work is done, your science fair report is done! Congratulations!

Appearances Matter
Neatness counts, spelling counts, grammar counts. Take the time to make the report look nice. Pay attention to margins, avoid fonts that are difficult to read or are too small or too large, use clean paper, and make print the report cleanly on as good a printer or copier as you can.