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.

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.

Once you have picked a topic that interests you for your science fair project, ideally you must do some background research on the topic. This will yield you enough information to allow you to make a good hypothesis to experiment on for the project.

You can collect information from the library, science related websites and even your friends and teachers. This information will be the basis for your making up your hypothesis and so you need to be sure that the information you have is accurate and relevant.

So how do you know if the information from the background release is good or bad? The first indicator is the source of the information. If it comes from a teacher it has more credibility than if it comes from your classmate.  Of course you will have to ensure that the teacher has no bias towards one point of view.

Another factor is the age of the information. As you know new discoveries can out date old knowledge in science very fast. So make sure that the information that you collect is the latest in the field. Also ensure that you made no mistakes in understanding that information. Errors in the hypothesis could creep in if you did not know what the information you accessed actually meant. This would effectively ruin the science project.

In the last blog post the importance of background research was proved beyond doubt for any science fair project topic. In this one we talk of dividing that background research into three parts that will allow you to actually do comprehensive and relevant research.

You have picked the hypothesis and now it is time to isolate the keywords in the possible hypothesis and the topic that you are researching. This will allow you ease of access if you are using the internet based search engines for your research. It will also allow you to organize your research data better. So the first part of background research is to pick your keywords.

Now comes the second and more difficult part. This is writing the research questions. Unlike the hypothesis that covers the whole topic, the research questions will ask very specific queries. These would be related to the different stages of the experiment that you are conducting for the hypothesis. Make these questions as graphic and specific as possible to help the project.

The third part is to take cognizance of the different concepts and areas of science that you are dealing with while conducting the science fair project experiments. This will allow you to research the topic better in a traditional library. Once your background research is through, you can move in to the next phase of the science project.