State Science Fair

In scientific fields, you write an abstract for people to read.  If people become interested, they read and look at your project.  This means, your abstract is the reason why someone would want to look at your project or not.  The hardest part of an abstract is you have to put your full experiment into a paragraph.   Listed below are some tips on how to make a strong abstract. 

An abstract for State Science Fair is a little different then a typical abstract.  

They are introducing you to an abstract, so they only want you to cover 4 parts.

1. Objective: Here you will state your question/objective followed by your hypothesis.  There should be no more than 4 sentences in this section.  Keep your hypothesis to only a few sentences.  Do not include your research - your project board has that section.

2. Materials & Methods: Here you list in a paragraph format an overview of your procedure.  Start by listing the main materials you used.  Next you will list how you followed your procedure. Every detail to your procedure does not go here (that is on your project).  Think of this more as what was the method or thought process to your procedure - not a recipe. List the amounts you used here ... like I used 225 plants. 

3. Results: Here is where you impress the judges with your data.  Create a paragraph that describes your results in data.  The easiest way to do this section is to shorten your actual results section to a paragraph.

4. Conclusion/Discussion: The judges have just read your data and now you show them what you learned with that information.  Create a paragraph that starts by reflecting back to your hypothesis.  Explain how the data supports or rejects your hypothesis and describe what you learned.  Remember to keep it simple and to the point ... 1 paragraph to make them want to read your FULL conclusion on your board.