The Work Ethic for Science Fair

For some of us science fair is one of the many agonizing high school experiences. All students in an honors or IB science are required to participate and it is scored separate from the grade book.

It is evident how much work students put into their project on presentation day, some are exceptional while others fall flat.

In my opinion, I believe that most students complete their project over the course of a few weeks or months, while a handful put it off until the last night. Most teachers have due dates for each step of the project along the way, making it more difficult to complete it in one night.

Also many science fair projects are too long to be successfully completed in one night. The people in the group have to collaborate to finish the project which may take between two and four hours. Adding to that, some teachers disapprove of students doing their science fair if it involves materials which may cause harm to the house of the student, meaning the students have to work at school, under supervision.

Not only does the experiment take a long time to finish, students also have to write an analysis and conclusion. The conclusion can also be the hardest part because you really have to think about what your data says and how your thesis matches or does not matches to your data and hypothesis.

After all that hard work then comes the display boards; the display boards are not as hard because all the information should have been already been completed, but this is where the work shows. The board should be eye catching so you still have to put some time into it and making it in one night is unrealistic. Due to to all these time taking factors most students do not have the chance to finish a science fair in one night and shouldn’t attempt to.