There are a number of science fair competitions for high school students at the national level. Close to 9 million students take part in science fair competitions annually. These include kids from kindergarten right up to grade 12. However it is only the grade 9 to 12 students who participate in the more serious science fair competitions.

These competitions are sponsored by leading members of the research and technology industry. Intel offers the Science Talent Search, the Conrad Foundation offers the Spirit of Innovation awards, Davidson Fellows Scholarship Program and the Siemen’s Westinghouse Competition in Math, Science and Technology is another one with serious prize money.

These competitions do not allow walk in entries. There is a lot of preparation that goes into making these the best showcase events for talent in science. So it is natural that there is a set of guidelines that needs to be met for the entries to qualify. It is once they qualify that the students get to compete in the final national level science competition.

The prizes differ from competition to competition and can vary from the finalists receiving $1000. to the winner taking a grand prize of $100,000. It is serious business indeed and if you want to win at the national level science fair competition you will need more than a good idea.

In recent times the cellphone has come under attack very often for being cancer generating, causing brain damage and stimulating growth of tumors. However that same little electronic device can also be a major life saver with the X-Finder. The telephone application was developed by 15 year old Maximilian from Germany.

The software is to be loaded on the cellphone and then can b e used to find the elderly missing by sending a special SMS to the phone. The phone will then respond with an SMS giving its exact location. This can make it easy to find a person trapped in an emergency. The X-Finder software won fourth place in the world’s largest science fair in San Jose in California.

The X-Finder has been called an electronic guardian angel by its creator, Maximilian. For an elderly gentleman who tends to forget just where he is due to Alzheimer’s disease the X-Finder could be just that. Or for a person trapped under rubble of a building after an earthquake, the device would truly prove a life saver.

A simple invention that uses another innovation as a vehicle, but what a difference it could potentially make. These are the kinds of ideas that win science fair prizes. Now think of something simple that could make a major difference and make it a reality.

One of the most fascinating and rewarding science projects has been the ongoing improvements made in organ transplantation. When a diseased organ is replaced by another human being’s organ and this procedure increases the life of the patient it is nothing short of a miracle.

The first successful organ transplantation took place in 1954 when Ronald Lee Herrick donated his kidney to his identical twin brother. The organ transplantation elongated his brother’s life by 8 years. The monozygotic twins were easily able to handle the transfer as the organ was not rejected by the body’s defence system as a foreign object.

Organ transplantation is a major surgical process which has come a long way since the first heart transplant by Dr Christiaan Barnard. In 1967 Dr Barnard transplanted the heart of a brain dead woman into a new body where it beat for 18 more days. The feat opened the flood gates and organ transplantation gradually became mainstream rather than experimental procedures.

Today the trouble is that we have the technology, but not enough organ donors. Most organs are harvested from old people who died natural deaths after 65 years. This makes the quality of the organs being transplanted poor. Accident victims who are brain dead, or suffer irreversible cardiac failure are better sources.

Often organs can not be harvested because it is unknown if the person wanted to donate them or not. The relatives of the deceased are too overwrought at the time to take the decision and good organs can get wasted. Perhaps  a science project expounding why one must become an organ donor would be a good idea to raise awareness about the issue.

The out of body sensations that a human being faces in a near death experience may actually help improve the virtual gaming experience if the neurologists in Switzerland have their way. The team of researchers at the Ecole Polytecnique Federale de Lausanne has been studying the brain’s reaction to the conflict of senses.

Led by Olaf Blanke, the team has been conducting experiments where a person is placed in a virtual reality setting. The volunteer is then asked to identify with a computer generated image or avatar. Then the person receives a physical stimulation like a stick touching their arm. Simultaneously something is seen to touch the computer generated avatar.

The human volunteer begins to identify with the computer generated avatar to a great extent. If the finger is squeezed of the human, but nothing is done to the avatar, the human being actually does not register the intense pain that he should feel. The perception that the avatar is the reality can become very strong.

The area of the brain which affects this “one with the avatar” complex is the same in which out of body experiences are handled. The region of the brain needs more scientific study but the neurologists say it could lead to several breakthrough treatments.

Ever wonder why you love going to some stores? It could be because of the kind of music they play says a scientific study. It has already been established that playing music can soothe the frayed nerves at a dentist’s clinic, but can the piped music in a store make you want to spend more?

Apparently it can, as per Trevor Cox, a British acoustics researcher. Although it would depend on some other factors such as how loud the music is and what the ambiance in the shop is like. Some conventional wisdom must apply to all the piped music we keep hearing.

Soft, slow music makes people tend to linger longer and spend more in stores as per Cox. However is the music is loud and brash it makes the people want to run away. The type of music being played is also a factor to be considered.

Christmas music including carols and songs such as “Let it snow” are actually effective in making wishful thinking come alive in shoppers during the season. This again, leads to more sales. In France the romantic instrumental tunes increased the sale of flowers in a shop.The playing of accordion music helped sell more French wine than German wine in a liquor store. This musical study is still a fledgling science project.

Woods and forests play an important part of our bio diversity and ecosystems. There have been enough science projects and research done to indicate that the trees and fauna of the forests are vital for maintaining the balance of life on Earth.

Now a team of researchers from the US Forest Service have conducted a carbon dioxide study which helps us understand why the loss of forest cover across the globe is affecting the climate adversely. Yude Pan led the study which revealed that global forests absorb close to 2.4 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases every year.

About 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere each year. So the forests actually help counter the effects of human activities which create carbon dioxide. 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide is absorbed by the forest cover across the world. However with logging and deforestation becoming more prevalent this figure is dropping.

Without the trees being available to absorb the excessive amounts of carbon dioxide that the human activities release we will face a major problem. Tropical rain forests which traditionally absorb as much as 50% of the total greenhouse gases are now struggling for survival. Does it really need more science projects and research to show us that our very survival is linked to this?

Gathering information about Earth’s closest celestial neighbor, the Moon, has been an ongoing science project for many researchers. The first lunar rover from the erstwhile Soviet Union, the Lunokhod I was placed on the moon in the early 1070s. The scientists however lost contact with the lunar rover a few months after it landed on the moon.

In 2010 NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Obiter or LRO found the Lunokhod I using high resolution cameras. When pulses of laser hit the vehicle it sent back a strong signal using its retroreflector.  The 2.3 meter long rover looks more like a bathtub on wheels but is in fact a powerful machine which can help in providing valuable data on the moon.

Scientists at the University of California at San Diego are being led by Tom Murphy to collect information from old lunar rovers including Lunkhod II, and the other rovers left behind on the moon by the three Apollo missions. As of now all five lunar rovers are reflecting the laser beams back to earth. The telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico is capturing this.

The experiment allows us to calculate the distance between the earth and the moon precisely down to the last millimeter. Did the people who made the moon rovers ever think that they could be put to this use? Just shows you how one science project can often blend into another.

Given the number of science projects involved in hunting for alien life form, it is equally possible that alien life form is also searching for us. It is even probable that they have already found us and are studying what we are up to on earth. And while I may not quite subscribe to a Men in Black scenario, it seems that scientists at NASA and Penn State University are far more speculative.

Last year Shawn Domagal-Goldman of NASA’s Planetary Science Division along with his colleagues developed scenarios where alien contacts ended in three broad categories: beneficial, neutral or harmful. These are the scenarios that could actually unfold in the aftermath of a close encounter. They were developed so that in case of actual alien encounters the human race would have a game plan to deal with them.

If the contact is beneficial the human race may benefit from ET technology and gain knowledge that it is still light years away from. If the aliens remain neutral,it is likely that they may merely observe how humans go about their business and not offer any help. Naturally the hostile or harmful alien contact is the one to watch out for. While it may all be speculation, it is indeed a fascinating topic for a science project discussion.

Once you have completed your science fair project, get to work on the display board that you will be using. The visual appeal of a project at the science fair is almost as important as the actual project. If the project does not stand out the judges may miss it.

One sure shot  way to get the attention of the judges is to have a great display board in place. Try and make the display board read like a newspaper. Add attractive and bold headlines for each section. Make sure you have some good illustrations supporting the written word.

To ensure that the people reading the display board don’t have to squint make the font size a large 16 to 18. Keep the font simple and don’t go in for anything extra curvy or twisty. Verdana, Ariel or Times New Roman usually work best.

Have enough charts and graphics to break the monotony of the written word, but not so many that people are wondering if you actually wrote anything worthwhile. Also acknowledge the help that you received from different people during the making of the project.

Make sure that you read up on what the science fair project allows you to put up on the display board. Some science fair rules do not allow you to put up your name on the display board, others do. So make sure you don’t get caught on a technicality.

The culmination of a successful science fair project is in the communication of the results that you have achieved. Essentially you have worked on the project for a while and now you are sharing with the world just what you managed to find out through your experiments.

This can be done through your final report, the model that you may have constructed and the display board. Now since you are considering a prize in the science fair competition you know that the judges will not have time to read your full report.

The maximum that they will read is the abstract. Make it count. What you need to do is make sure that the abstract includes an introduction, the problem statement, the procedures you used, the results you obtained and the final conclusion that you drew.

Try to keep the language simple, don’t add too many technical terms or abbreviations that people may not be familiar with. Meet the word limit and don’t add any images or tables to the abstract. That is for the pages that give details of the procedures that you followed.

If they want the judges can always flip through to the relevant page. So ensure that the entire report is well written and communicates all that you did on your science fair project.