If all the science projects were put together some of the most interesting ones would deal with flying. And since getting around in cars can get a bit tedious if you get stuck in a traffic jam it is natural to think that it would be better to make that personal family car fly to the destination of your choice.

So will flying cars ever come out of sci fi movies and books and become a reality? That’s a question that car designers have been asking themselves for decades. Some designs have worked and many other have not. But with each failure the eventual success gains credibility.

Of course once you have real flying cars around there will be other questions as well. Such as how would a flying car be classified? As an aircraft or as a road vehicle. What will be the fuel that it will use? Will it be a green car or will it guzzle non renewable resources? Of course these are minor questions when dealing with the actual thing.

So how soon can you expect the first flying car to be parked in the family garage? Not for a decade as yet, but its coming. And just maybe that science fair project model that you are working on in your garage is the prototype.

Many voice artists take good care of their voices by avoiding a number of food and drink items.  These include a number of spicy foods and aerated drinks. It also includes drinking chilled water. Here we will take the help of a science experiment to see if a singer’s voice gets adversely affected by drinking cold water.

You will need some equipment to record your voice. You can use a mic with the PC as well. Some cold water. A volunteer to sing or you can do it on your own. The hypothesis that we are testing is that drinking cold water makes it difficult for a person to sing naturally. For this we will have to make two sound recordings of the same person singing the same song.

Once before the person drinks cold water and the second time immediately after the person has drunk a glass of cold water. You can pick any song that the person can sing comfortably. It does not have to be some difficult tune, the alphabet song or happy birthday to you will do. Just make sure that they know that they must sing the same song both before and after drinking the cold water.

Now record the observations you have made of the two different sound tracks. Does the voice quality get affected by the cold water? Now this science project will prove if the singers really need to avoid cold water or not.

A useful science fair project can be made out of an experiment that you decide to conduct. However the crux of the matter says that the experiment should do something useful such as answer a specific question. It does not have to be a complicated question that no one has ever answered before.

You can happily leave such complicated stuff and experiments to professionals, but is it not possible for you to come up with a question about something around you? A question that can be answered by an experiment that carefully monitors data? You can do something as simple as watching and recording to saplings grow in different parts of the house.

The basic question here would be something as simple as do plants kept in a sunny room grow faster and healthier than plants kept in a room without a window. Now get the two identical plant saplings and get started with keeping a record of their growth each week. Keep all the data ready in your journal to make attractive charts and graphs.

Study all the differences that appear on the physical aspect of the plants. Record any specific incidents that caused a spurt of growth for a particular plant. And there you have it a great comparative study in plant growth answering a specific question. It may not be an exciting science project but it will be a useful one to prove a fact.

The presence of different types of charts and graphs on the display board at the science fair exhibition help the judges understand just how much effort you have put into your science fair project. That does not mean that you can just pick out any odd charts at random, they must be related to your project.

The best thing to do is to use the data that you have collected in your journal over the period that you built the science fair project to make your own charts and graphs. You can make charts with visuals of how the experiment worked out. You can use your hypothesis to cover one chart as well. Use any visually appealing diagram for the charts.

You will have to be a bit more careful when it comes to the graphs. Different types of graphs are used to represent different kind of data. For instance – A bar graph is used when compare quantities. A line graph can be used to show progress of individual parts of the experiment over a specific time frame. Then a circle graph to show parts of a whole. Charts and graphs help organize your data and present it in an easy to understand manner for the science fair judges.

A journal is any notebook in which you record what data you collect.  You can keep a journal for any purpose. It can be a record of your progress with whichever activity you choose. It is advisable to keep a journal when you embark on your long journey of making a science fair project.

It will make it easier for you to keep track of ideas that you have and information that you collect if you keep a regular journal. If you have chosen an experiment based science fair project, a journal is invaluable. It will help you record the information from each subsequent experiment with accuracy.

You can then use the data that was generated in the various experiments to make charts and graphs as visual representations of the experiment that you conducted. These visual aids can be used on the display board at the science fair. The journal itself must also be part of the display on the final day.

This will help the judges trace your journey in the science fair project that you will present to them. Naturally there are chances of not keeping up with the journal due to getting side tracked. So you must avoid this. Remember the more organized you are the better the chances of winning that Science Fair medal.

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.