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.

A research paper is the means to show the judges of the science fair project that you have really studied the background information for the project that you are displaying. The details that you have unearthed during your research into the project have to be shared in a systematic manner in the research paper.

In order to do so you have to include certain sections in the research paper. Ideally there will be a Title Page which includes the project title, your name and the date of submission. This is followed by the actual Report and the last section will have the Bibliography.

Now the meat of the matter is in the report and here is what you need to put into it. First off the topic or question that your science project seeks to answer need to be defined. Then you add the definitions of all the words, concepts, mathematical equations and any other tools that you use in the project.

After that you need to add a section where you discuss similar experiments conducted on the same concept. These should not be identical experiments but something related to what you have sought answers to. The last section of the report will be devoted to the answers you found in your research based on the initial questions you asked before beginning work on the science project.

The reason you are writing a research paper along with your science project is to explain how the experiments that you performed turned out the way that they did. This means that you need to make detailed notes along the way as you perform various experiments to write an authentic research paper.

You will also need to find the right terms and definitions for all variables involved in your experiments. There is great value in explaining the concepts and important words that are related to your science project in the research paper as it shows the judges that you have done your homework.

Other information that you can include in the research paper will be any mathematical formulas that you use, the details of any previous experiments on the same concept that have been conducted and any pictures that you may have taken along the process.

If you are using material that you have not generated on your own but got from elsewhere, it must be properly cited with an appropriate citation. Also be careful when you copy text from a book. This must be put into quotation marks and the author and book mentioned in the citation. That way you avoid any plagiarism, even accidentally in your science fair project based research paper.

After you have decided the topic on which your science fair project will be based you will need to hunt for background information. Most science teachers would like you to have at least three credible sources to confirm the information that you use.

You will have to list these sources in you bibliography as well. If you get the information out of a book make sure that you get the name of the book, the author’s name and the page number written down in the bibliography. Adding the date of publication and the publishing company will give additional weight to the data.

If it is a periodical magazine you will need to give the name of the article, the name of the author, and the date of publication of that specific issue of the magazine. Again you can add the name of the publishing company in the information that you provide in the bibliography.

Suppose you get the information through a search on the internet you will have to give specific details of the website that you accessed. This will include the web address or URL of the page with the information, the name of the author and / or editor of the page, the name of the website owner and the specific date that you accessed the information for your science fair project.