My Thoughts on the Science Fair (I didn't like it)

In 8th grade my school did a science fair. My friend had his mom do his entire project. The local newspaper thought it was great so they had an article about it in the paper. My friend bragged about it for weeks. We aren't friends anymore.

My sisters were told by their school that they had to do a science fair project that was completely unique. Like, if they googled it, and someone had already done it before, then they weren't allowed to do it. What an unrealistic expectation.

Actually I watched this video 3 weeks before my science fair. I was the only one who
1. did it all myself (no parent help)
2. Had a classic project (don't know if that was good or not- hmm..)
We were in a homeschool co-op thing so noone faked their data.
I was so proud of my project-
I got last place out of eighth.

I only did science fair in elementary school and I HATED it. It was so stupid and unnecessarily stressful. It literally made me cry.

My science fair wasn't compulsory, but the smart kids always did it and it made literally everyone else look dumb

during my 8th grade science fair, my ballistic teacher decided that along with doing an 100 point science fair project, we should also do a 100 point 10 page research paper on our topic 😀 we were given the option before the science fair to fill out a bunch of forms to participate in “regionals” (these had to be submitted before beginning) my teacher really wanted me to do it because i was at the top of the glass. well, i wanted nothing to do with regionals but ended up having a pretty good project. i won first school wide, and my teacher tried to get me to forge regionals papers because she wanted to have clout from the principal for having me at regionals. (i did not do it)

You should have called your battery science fair project “A HEATED discussion on batteries”

I know this may not seem very related but in university when I was writing my thesis proposal, I was always coming up with hypotheses that I knew were correct. When presenting them to my coach he said "The value of science is to discover something that is not known and something that may be useful to others. It is actually better if your hypothesis is wrong, because then you have identified a gap in the literature and you get to contribute to closing this gap". I think this was a very wise advice and I wanted to share it with you.

My science fair actually needed you to come up with an experiment that helped people in a growing way. Like, my idea was “How big should you grow your i don’t renember plants?” by giving them the same soil, but different water and sun.

I had science fairs back when I was in 2nd and 3rd grade (I was living in New York, NOT THE CITY, but in the state) and they were completely optional and we only presented them in the cafeteria. I loved doing them, and one of my projects was about Tyrannosaurus Rex. If I could do another science fair again (I'm in a different state now unfortunately), I would do another paleontology presentation, but do something on one of my favorite lesser known prehistoric animals like Deinonychus or Eurypterus. If you cannot tell, I'm a science nerd, I speak science

my class did genius hours, they weren't mandatory but it was the epitome of the science fair, you could present them and it's all the fun things about researching and asking questions and you could do it all (or at least most of it) on your computer. I remember doing one about mercury and the band green day it was super fun!

In my school we did it in teams, we had to research a topic of our choosing and decorate our assigned booth accordingly, which other students and teachers could then visit

But every time someone visited, we had to do an explanation of the topic (the same explanation over and over again)
Most visitors didn't pay attention and only came for prizes so it felt useless but we had to do it anyways

Those were probably the most miserable 6 hours of my life

James’ vids never get old for some reason to me

In 4th grade our school did a science fair. It was optional; we got about 50 students (out of 700) to participate. You got to choose what topic you did ( I did 'what surfaces produce the most mould?'). I ended up winning 2nd place so it was pretty good. I then learnt about 50% of the votes were the teachers that liked me, and 25% were my friends (like as in- I have a good work ethic or smthng- lol) I'm Australian

I did a science fair in 5th grade. I eventually made an experiment on "which household item is the stickiest" by timing pieces of paper stuck on the wall soaked with common household items like honey, water, etc. until they all fell. It was decently fun, but coming to a reasonably doable question (we had to come up with our own) was the hardest part

I once won 3rd place by exploiting the fact that the judges would like a giant poster board over the stiff colorful paper everyone else was using for their projects. Mind you, my project was something I threw together 3 DAYS before the project was due. But because the judges were boring as mfs, I ended up winning 3rd place. So here's a protip, presentation is key.

Back in the 7th grade we had a zoo fair project. We went to the zoo and studied an animal of our choice and had to make a board, a model of a new enclosure, a game to teach everyone about the animal and a kahoot. That was the most traumatizing school project of my life

Personally, I enjoyed science fairs....when I did it with my mom lol. I have a trophy for first place in 1st and 6th Grade and i have them sitting on my desk to remember all the stress my mom and I went through 🤣

My science fair almost killed me. Literally. I was in 3rd grade and I was working on my project one night when I realized that it was getting hard for me to breathe. I was rushed to the hospital and apparently almost died. Apparently, I’m allergic to the Rubber Elmer’s Glue that we were required to use for the poster board, and so yeah. I hate science fairs too James. You’re not alone.

I remember doing a science project involving food mold. “How long does mold take to grow ?” I was the only kid that had a unique project that was interesting and not repetitive. Yet no one came over to look and only commented how nasty the moldy food pictures where. Never again I put hard work to a stupid science project that took me hours to make sure they got moisture heat and nice foods like carrots rice and chicken. I did this in 8th grade