Science Fair Proposal Explained  

1. Check the category for your project: (2 points) 

Select the category which best matches the field of your experiment 
• Biological Sciences:  Projects involve living things or once living things. (For example: studies of plant growth, cell structure, molds, preservatives, growth and development).  
• Environmental and Earth Sciences: Projects involve the environment and the relationships of living things to each other and/or the environment, and the earth and physical phenomena. (For example: studies of organisms in their habitat, relationships between various organisms, studies of how people’s actions affect the environment, weather, astronomy, rocks/minerals, and water).  
• Physical Sciences: Projects involve non-living things. Computer, engineering, and mathematical projects are included in this category. (Other examples: aerodynamics, probability, crystal growth, evaporation, solar power, and electrical circuits).  
• Social Sciences: Projects involving human behavior and psychology.  

2. Purpose of your experiments. What problems are you going to solve? Your Investigative Question(s): (3 points) 

Make sure you answer both questions to get full points. This part of the paper must be written in question form. 
1) What is the purpose of your experiment? 2) What problem(s) are you going to solve? 
For example: Will plants receiving more sunlight grow faster than plants receiving less sunlight? What is the optimal amount of time that plants should receive sunlight? 

3. Your Hypothesis or Hypotheses based on your Investigative Question(s) (3 points) 

A hypothesis is an educated guess on what you think will happen to the dependent variable in your experiment when you change the independent variable. In this part, write in the future tense what you think will happen. In other words, write down the answers to you investigative questions. 
For example: Plants under 8 hours of full sunlight will grow faster than plants under 4 hours of full sunlight.   
    
  
4. Resources (books, magazines, etc. that will be used throughout your project) (2 points) 

Make sure to list all the books, magazines, websites etc. you used when doing research for your project. 
FOR EXAMPLE: 
Resources (books, magazines, etc. used in your bibliography): 
Resource A: 
Title        Holt Physics

Author       Serway & Faughn

Page   5-9, 341-345

Publisher       Holt Copyright Date   2003