How to win a science fair!

in #science6 years ago

So, You might be reading this because you want to know how to actually win a science fair, but you might also be reading this because you want something to read. But anyway here it is, how to win. Well, actually this is not a guide to win, but these are some helpful tips and project ideas. After the list of projects, all the projects are worked out.

Projects

  1. How many times should you shuffle a pack of cards before they are sufficiently mixed up?
  2. Test if the 5-second rule is really true.
  3. Measure witch surface in your house is the cleanest.
  4. Test if a ball filled with helium fall slower then a ball filled with air.
  5. What is the best strategy to win rock-paper-scissors?
  6. Does practice really make perfect?
  7. What is the best way to prepare food in a microwave?

Worked out projects

  1. Arrange all the cards in order, then you have one person shuffle them, and then after each shuffle, you count how many cards are still in sequential order. So you repeat this a bunch of times and then take an average of how many shuffles it takes until you feel they are sufficiently mixed up.

  2. Drop a piece of food on the ground and leave it there for one second, and then drop another piece on the ground and leave it there for six seconds. Then take a culture of each and put it in a Petri dish, and then compare the spore growth after a couple days.

  3. Take a culture of some objects in your house, now put them in Petri dishes and compare them again after a couple of days.

  4. To test this you would fill one ball with normal air and one with helium and then do a bunch of kicks and measure how far they would fly, but there is a slight problem with this power tip 3. A better way to test this is to drop the ball from a tall distance, and time if one hits the ground faster then the other.

  5. There is a paper written about the best strategy for winning rock-paper-scissors Link to the paper basically it boils down to what sign you should throw depending on what your opponent threw the round before, so first, you play a bunch of matches and measure how many you win. And then after you read the paper you measure how many you win again and see if your win percentage increases.

  6. First, you chose a skill, for instance shooting free throws, and then practise for a set amount of time every day and then track your progress to see how quickly you get better.

  7. So you pick one food, like a frozen burrito, and then test a bunch of different settings and maybe locations in your microwave. To check the temperature you can just use a meat thermometer.

Power tips

  1. The project should be related to the person, something they encounter in their everyday life, they actually want to test.

  2. Whatever you do, do NOT do the project: What effect does sunlight or no sunlight have on plant growth, because first of all, three other people already do that, and secondly that is SO boring!

  3. Even with for instance the same ball, you can't kick it the same distance every single time, so you're introducing some extra uncertainty, not just measuring the ball.

  4. Come up with an experiment where you keep everything the same between trails and change one thing, that will allow you to measure the effect of just that one thing.

  5. If you want to time something, don't do it with a stopwatch because that depends on your reaction time, a better way to time something is to make a slo-mo video and then count the frames. For instance, if you film at 60 FPS and something takes 30 frames, then you know that it took 0.5 seconds.

These where 7 projects and some tips to win science fairs, but the most important thing is that you have fun! So good luck winning!!

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