How do Sci-Fair Finalists conceive of winning topics?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>My main focus isn't to win, but I am just really curious. Many of the high school science finalists experiment with topics I haven't even heard of in my school.
I have always wondered where they get their ideas from.
Some say these people worked with scientists. Wouldn't a high schooler working with a scientist not seem ridiculous? A high schooler has limited knowlege while the scientist is this PhD freak . . . I just don't get it. How would the scientist have the patience to teach or whatever they do with the high schooler?</p>

<p>I am interested in starting on something in, say, physics, but I just don't know what to do. I can't seem to think of an appropriate question. What would you do in my position? I am not in AP science classes, although I will be next year (I am a Sophomore now).</p>

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<p>It is really quite easy to do research in molecular biology after taking AP bio. It is harder in some of the other fields, but there are kids that are super-advanced so that is how they can do it.</p>

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<p>But how are they so super-advanced? Do they read outside of what is generally needed?</p>

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<p>Just find a good mentor. My mentor took a lot of time to teach me and guide me along. Also, a lot of the projects you see come from summer programs like RSI (there are many others) that are 6-8 weeks and consist of just doing research.</p>

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<p>But shouldn't a research be individual effort? How would you not know that the student actually did the research and the mentor didn't? </p>

<p>@bballdude = Can you tell me of programs like RSI that encourage research? I found the UC Davis Young Scholar's Program that involves biological research, but it was expensive. Anything else in mind? Thanks a lot.</p>

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<p>If you want to get a winning topic, first train yourself to see everyday things
in a if-then kind of way...cause and effect; throw in control variables
and the independent variables and dependent variables. Practice this
way of thinking and then go online and browse Science News or something like that and in a few hours you will be swimming in good winning topics.</p>

<p>My public school science faculty have helped me wonderfuly serving as mentors
and fellow 'curious-to-know-what-else happens' friends. Since neither of my
parents are into science that has been very helpful. ...and no, no science
teacher is going to do your research for you
:)</p>

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<p>Hahaha, where is mollie. This is what you are training to become mollie.. what is it that you're called: "the scientist is this PhD freak."</p>

<p>Anyway, getting back to the OP's post, many top science fair projects are a bad example of how to proceed. Most of these kids come from extraordinary circumstances, have extraordinary backgrounds, etc. </p>

<p>But arwen is right. You need to start thinking of the world from a scientific standpoint. For example, you are walking through the rain. Then you think, hmmm what would be the optimal speed for me to walk so that the least amount of rain hit me? Well it seems that my hair will get less rain the faster i walk, but the faster I walk, the more I am running into the rain, so more rain hits me from the front. But what about what clothes I'm wearing? Will the rain bounce off? It probably depends on the speed and angle of attack. Oh and we should work with some real numbers. I wonder how fast the rain droplets are traveling. I wonder how much water is in cubic meter in the general area around me. </p>

<p>See, you don't need a PhD to start asking interesting questions. You just have to keep asking questions, and then trying to answer them by doing simple experiments, running simple simulations, writing programs, trying to do the proof, etc. It starts simple, and it grows from there.</p>

<p>And the reason scientists like to mentor younger students? Well the reality is that science isn't really passed down through class work. It's passed down in a one on one fashion. And these scientists are getting the real joy of teaching. It's not some set of 200 odd faces that they dont' remember and who don't care about. It's one kid with a cool project that comes to them once in a while. </p>

<p>Also scientists are suppose to serve the community and such (it's part of their job description implicitly I think at many universities...) :).</p>

<p>And of course research is not an individual effort (it can be though...). Look at science. Most great discoveries were made through careful collaboration and discussion, whether in person, through email, or by handwritten letter.</p>

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<p>Ryuuzaki L
I disagree with you saying that research should be an individual effort. Yes, you should have physically done all the experiments from which you present data you call "yours" but most top high school research projects, esp in biology, are parts of larger overarching projects. If you tried to do something completely unrelated, they would not pay for you to do it. The professor or postdoc trains you because 1) they want to teach and pass on the passion for science and 2) if you're competent, they've just got free labor. </p>

<p>And also, if you really want to do research, I'd suggest to shy away from these large programs where you have to pay. Instead, call up or email some local labs and express your interest.</p>

<p>Another thing, kids in bio (esp molecular bio or biochem) research understand what they're doing because they're probably reading a LOT. I know from personal experience that a couple dozen papers and a college senior level textbook or two for a project is not abnormal. all of which are pretty dense reading.</p>

<p>and finally. you probably won't know if the student is presenting their mentor's work if it's not glaringly obvious that they did not have the time or technical skill to have done it themselves. But I like to think that most people are honest.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Hahaha, where is mollie. This is what you are training to become mollie.. what is it that you're called: "the scientist is this PhD freak."

[/quote]

Yeah, I was trying not to let that ruffle my feathers. :-P</p>

<p>I'm taking on a freshman undergraduate for the summer for my project, which in my mind really isn't so different from taking on a high school student. I'm really excited about it, because as differential says, science is sort of a guild, with extended training passed down from person to person. It will also be great for my teaching skills, because I'll have to stop and remember that my undergraduate doesn't know all the background information about my project that I do, and I'll have to frame my project in ways he'll understand.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I disagree with you saying that research should be an individual effort. Yes, you should have physically done all the experiments from which you present data you call "yours" but most top high school research projects, esp in biology, are parts of larger overarching projects.

[/quote]

Haha, most top graduate student projects and top postdoc projects are parts of larger overarching projects. You don't get to call the shots and think up whole avenues of research yourself until you become a professor. :)</p>

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<p>
[quote]
But shouldn't a research be individual effort? How would you not know that the student actually did the research and the mentor didn't?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I would tend to agree with you (in the context of high school science fairs and other competitions - research in a non-competitive context is collaborative). But it's not the reality of the high school science fair world for most of the top competitors. Personally, I think a reasonable criterion for whether it is acceptable to pass research off as your own for a competition is "If a paper is being published on this, would the competitor be first author?" This is how a lot of groups which hold student paper contests for college students do it.</p>

<p>I did my research myself (and won regional-level awards at ISEF). You have to hope for tough judges - they are better at telling the difference between the kids in university labs who actually bother to know their stuff and do their own work, even if their mentor set them up with a topic and guided them, and the kids who are hangers-on. There are plenty in the latter category, and I used to get <em>so</em> much schadenfreude out of watching tough judges rip them to shreds (while easy judges brought on frustration, as I watched them be impressed by big words that these hangers-on memorized for pre-prepared presentations).</p>

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<p>^^The other problem is clueless judges. I've had my fair share who just do not know what I am talking about. Take for example, my recent pres at JSHS. My judges were a mech. engineer and a nutritionist. My research was an intensive neurobio project that I really did explain well. I had many compliments on it, but the judges had trouble getting the gist of it. That's just one thing to keep in mind i guess when going to places where you present.</p>

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<p>@Ryuuzaki,
Start with the goal of conducting an interesting science project. To begin with the goal of conducting a "prize-winning" project is unrealistic. Not impossible, just ... not the right focus. I'll tell you how it worked out for my daughter, who's now a freshman at MIT. Just this week she declared physics as a major, so she has similar interests.</p>

<p>In the beginning, as a high-school freshman, she was not able to find any physics researcher willing to take her on. Nor was she able to find any program in which she could do research (she's in a large public high school that has never developed those sorts of relationships with local researchers). But in the fall of that year, she was hiking in the Sierras above Lake Tahoe and came across a small stream. There's a lot of concern about pollution in Lake Tahoe contributing to diminishing clarity and color of the lake. She thought the stream might travel through a golf course lower down the mountain, and she started talking with her aunt about doing a study of the stream. When they got back to her aunt's house, they made some phone calls: they learned that the Nevada water district would loan my daughter a set of water testing instruments (for free!); they contacted the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Reno and learned that several researchers would be willing to talk with her about all of the stream studies going on in the Tahoe Basin at the time. In the end, this was an individual project in the sense that she never worked on the project of a senior researcher, but it also involved collaboration. Using a GPS, my daughter walked up the stream, from the Lake to the source, mapping the entire stream (what a hike!). She set up 9 testing sites at intervals along the way, and then over a 6-month period, tested the water. Researchers from DRI became interested in some of her findings and began to share some of their data with her, and she shared her data with them. That project did win some major prizes at science fairs. More importantly, she shared her research with folks at DRI and those conversations led to a continuation study that she undertook the summer after her junior year. </p>

<p>After having completed that environmental project in her sophomore year, my daughter wanted to do a physics project during her junior year. She was able to show local researchers what she had already done and written up, and because of the previous experience, she managed to find a physicist willing to give her some ideas for the next project.</p>

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<p>I don't have the time to read this entire thread, so my apologies if this has been repeated or otherwise said by the other posters.</p>

<p>But finding a mentor is step one towards a great science fair project. Even if you have brilliant ideas, you need someone to help you realize how to harness that energy, focus into a formalized experiment, gather the relevant results, and distill those data and conclusions into a paper or presentation. Sometimes high-schoolers come with their own ideas for research; sometimes they just find a professor interested in the same topic(s) they are and go from there. Both routes work - I feel the latter is more common, though, and that's probably because very few high-schoolers are capable of creating a completely original investigation. Although it's rather easy for high-schoolers to suggest new directions for an existing project that they have joined onto, which I think is quite common.</p>

<p>Regarding what extent of collaboration is "too much" - well, for one thing, your mentor should have a decent moral compass regarding that. Obviously, I firmly believe that any research you present at a science fair or write a paper about, whether it's your regional ISEF competition or a paper for Siemens or what, should have been undertaken primarily by you. Similarly, you should completely write your own papers and create your own presentations. Not only is that the only ethical standard, judges can tell if you're trying to claim something that's not yours.</p>

<p>If your mentor did something for you, that's totally fine. Still, you should do your best to understand what he/she did, even if you can't necessarily learn the technical skills to recreate that. This happened to me when I did my high-school research (if you really care to find out what I won, Google me); my professor and grad student set up the first set of the experiment for me, and I took over from there. For one paper competition, I got to see the judges' comments - one of them explicitly stated that he didn't think I could have written the paper I submitted. <i>That</i> made me chuckle.</p>

<p>Anyway, this really is a great topic for discussion. At some point I'll try and blog about this...</p>

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<p>ask-paul, jessiehl et al, my first science fair was a shocking revelation
to me. It was the first time I understood how really nice my public HS was
and appreciate my science teachers who were apolitical and genuinely
focused on learning and never got involved in idiot-SF-commitees.</p>

<p>I naively walked in to a SF competition not understanding the
"you-could-not-have-done-this because I do not understand it and you
come from a rural public school" mentality of the bureaucratic individuals who seem drawn to SFs. Unfortunately for me, I had knowledgeable judges who deemed my spiel worthy for the top honors. </p>

<p>The Siemens and Intel STS are so much cleaner with blind refereeing and people who are intellectually drawn to judging- not some bureaucratic version of the evil Darth Vader trying to prove why their School's entry is better than someone elses.</p>

<p>Logically, I expect the adult setting is going to be similar.... though this time I would
have the big name college doing the heavy stick carrying while I tread carefully :)</p>

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<p>The major benefit of undertaking a research project is to find out if you enjoy research. Taking it to a regional science fair may be a great experience, or it may not -- in my opinion, that's secondary. In contrast to the above post, where the fair was judged by school bureaucrats, the regional fair here in Silicon Valley is judged by engineers and local scientists. Many of them are graduates from MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, etc. There's a separate prize for technical papers that is judged by scientists at NASA. So the sort of school politics described by Arwen doesn't occur. Still, that doesn't mean the outcome will be what you desire. </p>

<p>Two years ago I encountered a high-school junior who had broken down in tears because none of the judges had expressed much interest in her project. She had spent hours and hours, months and months, conducting a chemistry project on her kitchen table. In Silicon Valley however, she was competing against students who had hooked up with scientists at Stanford and other local universities and research organizations. In that context, a home-grown project can seem far less exciting to a SF judge. At the Silicon Valley Fair, many of the kids deemed worthy of going on to the state fair are put on a waiting list, and they may never even get the chance to go. But the big picture is that it doesn't matter in terms of having a shot at MIT. Here's what I told the girl at the fair: If you have conducted research projects several years in a row because you've come to enjoy research, that experience will serve you well. I know some current MIT students who never won major science fair awards, but they did interesting work nevertheless. </p>

<p>I don't know of long-term studies of the Intel Science Search, but a study done on the Siemens-Westinghouse competition concluded that students who participate in the competition are highly likely to become research scientists, regardless of whether they place or win a prize.</p>

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<p>Read......</p>

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<p>CalAlum, your D is amazing.</p>

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<p>many intel semifinalists had their research modelled and almost done by their professors..</p>

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<p>^ If this is true, it'd show in the end.</p>

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<p>yeah, they just don't get into finalist. i've heard that semifinalist is not too impressive because that means u have a good mentor. but finalist or top 40 shows actual passion.</p>