Prepare yourself mentally and physically for the challenge of presenting the science fair project that you have labored over in the best possible manner to the judges. For this you can do a few preliminary preparations that will go a long way. Here’s how to gear up for the big day.

Read the guidelines given for the oral presentation carefully. Take into consideration how much time you will have and what all you need to cover in your speech. Be relevant and be through. You can start making your remarks in notebook and file away good quotations that you can use as well.

Remember you need to write and practice the speech so that you do not need to refer to any paper while you give the presentation. Time the speech to see that you are not overshooting the time allowed. Have a trusted friend help you rehearse if you have any fears of public speaking.

Also be prepared to field any questions related to the science fair project that the judges or any of your classmates and friends may have for you. The data to support your answers must be available in your abstract or journal. Then you will be able to give a killer oral presentation for your science fair project.

Presentation is more likely to get you that prize at the science fair than the kind of project that you have. It is very important that you project all that you have done in the project correctly to the judges to be eligible for their prize shortlist. Here is how you go about doing it.

Get a tri fold board from the local stationery shop. This will give you three rather than one display surface to work with. Place you experiment material in the area between the tri board unless its a working model. Then demarcate a separate area to demonstrate the model.

Your abstract or report should be placed on the table titled properly. Along with it also place the journal in which you have been making entries all through the experimentation stage. This allows all the data that you collected to be part of the final presentation unobtrusively.

Now using the data from the journal design charts and graphs that you can put up on the tri board display. The board should also display the title of your project prominently followed by the hypothesis that you made. This should be followed by information on the steps you took to test it and all the material that you used.

Once your display is all set work on the oral presentation. Have a script but be ready to answer questions thrown at you as well. After all the science fair judges are looking at how well you know the subject besides how well you have showcased it.

There is a danger of getting so involved in your science fair project that you do not realize how it looks to an outsider. This also happens when you get emotionally attached to all aspects of the project and do not know how to trim away what is actually superfluous to the project.

To avoid falling into this trap you should finish working on all the aspects of the project and then show it to someone who was not involved with it at all. Test the project on a novice to see what reaction the project generates from a thoroughly neutral source. Now you will learn what changes need to be made in the project.

Ask the person if they find all questions being suitably answered by the display board. Find out if there is any more information that you need to impart in your scripted speech or via the display board. Make them a questionnaire about all the aspects of the project and include a field where they can tell you a way in which it could be improved.

This exercise can be repeated with about three people so that you get a fair idea about how your science project gets received by people. Now that you have this data you can use it to improve the project. Make sure to use all practical suggestions that you find. Don’t worry if you can’t make drastic changes, they are probably not required anyway.

There is nothing more appealing than the display of an organized mind set out on a display board. The judges at a science fair project want to see just how you processed the information that led to your science fair project. It is with the help of the display board that you can show them each step that you took.

Of course there are many ways to jazz up your display board and this is just one suggestion that you can use. Or you can build on it and personalize it by adapting it to your own project. What I am about to suggest is to use digital photograph print outs to make your display board more attractive.

What photos would you use? Different stages that your project went through before it became the final product that you are demonstrating. This kind of display works best for a working model that you have constructed. What you can do is take snaps of the model in various stages of construction.

Now string up these snaps with captions and add a sheet on the side explaining what you were accomplishing at that stage of model construction. This will give you a sort of baby book for your working science fair model. It will include the theory and the actually work that you did on your display board in a unique manner.

The most crucial part of a science fair project is the actual demonstration of your working model. To visually demonstrate how the scientific principle you have chosen works is a challenging thing to do. Once you have the basic idea of what you want to do get to work on building the working model.

Remember that getting a model to work the way that you want it to can take more than a few tries. So don’t quit if the model refuses to do what you want it to the first time you set it up. A small wire displaced can also make a perfectly well made model malfunction. So check all the stages of your model in detail.

You know through all the research that you have done how it should work. Now its time to put that theory into action by seeing how it translates in the real physical world. Once you have perfected your model make sure that you give it enough practice runs to see that it works well under diverse conditions.

Now you are ready to work on the presentation speech that will accompany the demonstration of the working model at the science fair. This is the fun part as you can make up a script that will highlight all the work that you have done on the model and it will make the model come alive for the judges.

There are any number of sources that you can use to research your science project subject. The best place to start is the school library. You can ask your librarian to help you get a few related books and then browse through them to see what you need to use for the project. Maintain a record of all the books that you use so that you can get them out to refer to again.

If you still need more help get on to the information highway on the internet. There are some great websites related to science on the internet. These sites can probably answer all your questions twice over. The only danger here is that you may end up with a headache trying to sort out which sites information you need to use and which is superfluous.

You must also set a limit to the time that you have for research or else you will keep reading up on the project and never get started out on it. Now remember that your science projects do not always have to be about serious stuff. Even ones which are funny or can bring about some interaction with your viewers can do well in a science fair competition. How about a project on blowing the largest bubble possible?

Many times the most difficult thing about a science fair project is getting the one that you want to do. After you pick out one the rest is fairly routine and easy to implement. However the sheer number of options that you have to base your science fair project on can actually be a daunting thing causing a number of students to procrastinate about making the actual choice.

So here is how you can simplify that decision making process and find an interesting idea to make a science fair project as well. The trick is simple, keep asking questions. If you think of a particular idea and ask how will I do that? What will be needed to construct that? Will it be easy to build? Who will be able to help me with that project?

Suddenly you will find that the ideas that are not viable will fall by the way and the ones that remain become stronger contenders to become a project idea. You will eventually be able to narrow down the field to a particular one which interests you and is easy to do something with. Now you need to ask even more specific questions.

Eventually you will have a problem statement and a possible solution which will become your science fair project. The simple elimination system works best in this case. Why don’t you give it a try. You may find that its easier than running concrete ideas through your head.

Being a scientist means that you will organize yourself in a particular manner. You will do things in a preset pattern. Most science fair projects have a series of steps to go through in an organized manner. So does that mean if you are not organized you are not in step with the nature of things? Based on new research it just might be!

Bioengineers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science what they term as self assembly in particles and molecules. They claim that everything from atomic crystals to spiral galaxies have a tendency to self assemble themselves in a preset pattern. This is exactly what they are studying on a micro particle level.

As per the researchers there is a tendency of micro particles of different materials to align themselves in a specific pattern if they are randomly thrown together. This self assembly behavior was definitely not what the scientists expected. It was found that self-assembly at the molecular level is particularly prevalent in biological processes.

The unique phenomenon whereby randomly dispersed micro particles self-assembled into a highly organized structure as they flowed through micro scale channels has fascinated the researchers. So guess what you may be predisposed on a molecular level to be well organized.  Still don’t think being so organized is your cup of tea? Try organizing this.

For as long as story tellers have existed there has been a magical invisibility device in stories that would make the person wearing it disappear. In ancient Greek mythology goddess Athena wore an invisibility cap during the Trojan War.  In another classic by J.R.R. Tolkein, Bilbo Baggins found a ring that could make him invisible. This he passed on to his nephew Frodo.

In more recent memory Harry Potter was presented with his father’s invisibility cloak. He put it to good use spying on enemies, getting into places unseen and avoiding spells of people out to harm him. The thing is that the so called invisibility device may no longer be a figment of an author’s imagination.

Thanks to science projects in nano technology there are now experiments with materials that can actually make you invisible. Of course what it really uses is special reflecting surfaces to shield the objects placed inside the cloaking device from light. The first working prototype however is nothing like Harry Potter’s cloak. It is rather like a small CD which hides whatever object is placed in the centre.

It may be early days yet for the invisibility device, but now that science is catching up with science fiction you can rest assured that some momentous day in the not so distant future you will be able to make yourself invisible. In the meanwhile why not try out this different science fair project.

Was there any scientific proof to the fact that men feel they will get lucky with a girl if they play romantic songs? Not till psychologists at the South Brittany University got it. The science project involved playing either romantic songs or some neutral music while a guy asked a girl for her phone number.

In the room where the romantic music was playing the guy was able to get the phone number 52 per cent of the time. While in the room where the neutral music played the guy got lucky only 28 per cent of the time. The researchers were led to the conclusion that playing a romantic song in the background would actually double the guys chance of getting romantic with a girl.

Of course this over simplifies matters somewhat. And naturally there would be other factors to consider for the guys. After all even with the music being romantic a huge 48 per cent of them did not have much luck did they? So while you can say that the music lessens the odds of getting romantic it is by no means the only element in play.

It would probably increase the chances of a romantic interlude if the couple already knew each other instead of being total strangers. Also there would be less resistance if both knew they were not part of an experiment. So don’t take it literally but try out this science project instead.