Sacramento Regional Science & Engineering Fair

March 26-27, 2010

Rosemont High School

2010 Fair Schedule of Events

2010 Awards Ceremony Schedule of Events

2010 Navigating College Admissions Workshop:  Tips for Planning Ahead

A college education is a life-long dream for your children.  That is why the Sacramento Regional Science & Engineering Fair is teaming up with Creative Marbles Consultancy to offer parents this FREE college admissions workshop.  College admissions experts will decode the seemingly incomprehensible process of college admissions and present tips for affording the rising costs of a college education. 

Come to this FREE workshop at Rosemont High School, Saturday, March 27 from 10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. and learn strategies for guiding your student to achieve their college goals!

Involved Parents

Parents play a vital role in their children's science education. If you think you need to know a lot about science to help your children with their science fair project, relax, because you don't! Offering support and encouragement, proofreading research papers, and attending the science fair are just a few ways you can make a difference.

To make science a part of your family's everyday life:

• Don't start with science. Start with your child's personal interests.

• Tie science into what they know—a new movie, a favorite book, a hobby.

• Motivate your child by making science fun.

• Discuss science news and issues at dinner or breakfast.

Why Are Science Fairs Important?

A science fair project can give students the first chance to design his or her own learning experience, one that allows him or her to innovate, just as scientists do in the real world. Students will be able to explore personal interests to select an area for his or her science fair project, as well as learn the scientific method to answer a question. Each student will also develop skills above and beyond science proficiency, such as:

• Reading Comprehension and Writing: Doing background research and writing a research paper

• Math: Creating graphs and performing data analysis

• Time Management: Planning a multi-step project

• Communication: Presenting and explaining the science fair project

• Ethics Understanding: Learning about plagiarism and the importance of credit and citations

The Value of a Project

With the jam-packed schedules of today's families, why would either a student or a parent want to add one more major activity? Clearly, any school project assigned to a student should meet a stringent test for usefulness. Surprising to some, a science fair project is one of the best learning experiences a student can undertake. And, if it is taken seriously, it can be an excellent way to earn significant prizes, qualify for scholarships, and distinguish a college application.

Conceptually, a science fair project is very straightforward. A student chooses a scientific question he or she would like to answer. Then, library and Internet research on the question give the student the background information he or she needs to formulate a hypothesis and design an experiment. After writing a report to summarize this research, the student performs the experiment, draws his or her conclusions, and presents the results to teachers and classmates using a display board. Most students do their projects for a school science fair, but in many cases, students can enter that same project in fairs at the city or county level.

Colleges want to see what students have done with the opportunities they had available to them, and science competitions are a fantastic opportunity. Typically, 2–4 percent of science fair entrants at the high school level move on to the top level of science fair competition, the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).

Highlights of a Project

·   Choose An Exciting Topic

o Choose a topic that will interest and challenge you.

o Do not be afraid to try something new—you will learn about it along the way.

o Remember that complicated-looking projects do not guarantee a win!

·   Learn Cool Theories

o After picking a topic, spend a lot of time gathering background research.

o Look for important concepts and equations that will explain how and why your experimental results turn out the way they do.

o Find equations that will help you predict the outcome of your experiment. Learn all the important math, physics, chemistry etc. in order to fully understand your project.

·   Be a True Scientist

o Keep a detailed and up-to-date lab notebook with you regularly.

o It will help you organize your thoughts and if you ever need to go back to see how you did something, you can find out.

o Judges will want to see a lab notebook during the judging period.

·   Trudge Onward!

o During the experiment, do not get discouraged if you run into a lot of problems.

o Do not stop if your experiment does not turn out the way you think it should.

o It's okay if your hypothesis is proved incorrect.

o Judges like to see persistence, so keep at it! Ask for advice if you need help. Judges love to talk about the problems you ran into and how you solved/tried to solve them.

·   Use Your Brain (it's not as hard as it seems!)

o Look at your results and ask yourself why they do/do not make sense.

o Apply your background research to your results to help you figure out what happened during the experiment.

Resources for Parents