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Second, the book generallyfocuses on experimental projects thatdemonstrate the scientific method. Webelieve that learning the experimentalprocess is most beneficial for studentsandpreparesthemforfurtherendeavors in science and for life itselfby developing skill in making decisionsand solving problems. Although thismay appear to limit the book’sapplication to more advanced studentsand more experienced science teachers,we believe that some of the ideas canbe applied to elementary school levelchildren and teachers as well.Inaddition, we recognize that there arenumerous sources of non-experimentalscience activities in the field, and wehope this book will fill a gap in theavailable material.Third, we’ve tried to address thedifficulties many teachers face in helpingtheir students get started on scienceprojects. By explaining the processesandincludingextensiveresourcesuggestions, we hope to make thescience projects more approachable andenjoyable.We hope the book willprovide direction for teachers who arenew to experimental science.And finally, in each section ofideas we’ve tried to include a broadsampling of projects that cover most ofthe important concepts related to eachtechnology.We hope the book will be helpfuland will fill a gap in the publishedmaterial on science projects inrenewableenergyandenergyconservation. If so, every member ofour society will benefit.concerning the use of hazardouschemicals or biological materials. (Forexample, mercury thermometers arerarely used at all in science classroomstoday.)Also, students anticipatingscience fair competitions should makesure they understand the rulesgoverning science fair projects. (Detailsshould be available from the director ofyour local, regional, or state fair.)There are ethical and legalconsiderations related to using animalsand human in science projects—eventhose that simply ask questions ofpeople.The practice is generallydiscouraged both in classrooms and inscience fairs. However, if a vertebrateor human subject is to be used in ascience project, the teacher shouldconsult school policies and seek theadviceofappropriateschooladministrators. As is the case for safetyissues, students designing projects forscience fairs should understand theregulations on animal and humanexperimentation before beginning theproject.About This BookThroughout the process ofcompiling this book, we’ve benefitedtremendously from the all the teacherresearchers and the NREL mentors whohave contributed to the project ideas.First, the book is written by K-12teachers for teachers and other adultswho educate children in grades K-12.This allows us to include projects with avariety of levels of difficulty, leaving it tothe teacher to adapt them to theappropriate skill level.6

The Role of the Teacherresearch. These people are often quitewilling to help either you or yourstudents. A number of school districtseven offer workshops that deal withscience projects (often with graduatecredit). You may find this a good wayto get started.We also offersuggestions here that should be usefulto teachers when using science projectsas instructional tools.Science projects are an effectivetool for helping students learn valuableskills they’ll need later in their educationand their careers, because they areinterdisciplinary activities that involvemath, language, arts, and otheracademic areas. Yet when students areasked to do a project for the first time—either alone or in a group—the processsometimes seems intimidating, and thestudent often has a hard time knowingwheretostart.That’swhyencouragement and direction from theteacher are vital. Keep in mind thatinvolving each student in a scienceproject can often do more to generateinterest in science than a teacher canever hope to achieve through lecturesand demonstrations.Doing science projects may alsoseem difficult for teachers who were notscience majors or who are using scienceprojects as instructional tools for thefirst time, but it really isn’t. All youneed to do is to coach students to breakthe project up into manageable partsand follow the scientific method, asoutlined in the next section.Thereferences cited in the back of the bookcan also help you get started. Andremember: you are not alone. In everycommunity, no matter how remote orsmall, there are resources that can helpyou and your students.Help and information can beobtained from industries, hospitals,governmentagencies,educationdepartments, colleges, and universities,animal hospitals, zoos, and museums.Don’t overlook resources in yourown school district. The chances aregood that someone has experience withscience projects or even specificTypes of Science ProjectsWhen introducing the concept ofscience projects, one of your first taskswill be to help students understand thedifference between the basic types ofscience projects: non-experimental isplayordemonstrateinformation that is already known; theydo not involve experiments designed bystudents to solve a problem. Projects ofthis type are more useful to studentswho are learning how to search forinformation about a given topic on theweb or in the library and to report theinformation gathered to the teacher orthose interested.In general, theseprojects are not appropriate forcompetitive science fairs and do notteach the skills of critical thinking andproblem solving.Experimental projects involvethe student in critical thinking andscientific processes, such as designingexperimentstosolveproblems,developing models of scientific conceptsor mathematical processes, collectingand recording data, analyzing andpresentingdata,anddrawing7

conclusions that result in some newunderstanding of a concept or idea.Projects of this type focus on discoveryand investigation. Unfortunately, theseprojects do not generally predominate ineither the classroom or at science fairs. Tips for the Teacher The teacher can help the studenteach step along the way of anexperimental project. We’ve tried tooutline some tips below for each step. 1. Selecting a project topicDuring the process of identifying atopic, students review articleswritten by other researchers and are,in essence, conducting literaturereviews. Regardless of the students'ages, the teacher should encouragethem to record the sources of theirinformation. We suggest using indexcards because they’re easy toorganize. The students will need thisinformation when it’s time to writethe final report.For students, one of the mostdifficult parts of a science project isselecting a topic.Too often,students think they must do aproject that involves truly groundbreaking research, like “curingcancer” or inventing something new.That’s not at all the case. Instead,you should encourage student tochoose an area of interest and useinformation written or presented byothers to identify a project topic.Above all, keep it simple! Thisprocess must begin early in the yearand can be accomplished in a varietyof ways: Encourage students to askquestions.Provide lists of topic ideas forstudents to use. (Keep a list onfile and add to it as studentsmake suggestions and you readof new ideas.)Have students read articles inscientific periodicals and ontrusted scientific websites. Thiscan help students focus onproject ideas.Encourage students to go to thelibrary (or take them thereyourself).2. Identifying a specific problem orquestionThis portion of a science project isvery closely related to the selectionof a specific topic, because itinvolves asking questions about thechosen topic. The difficulty comes indeciding whether it is possible forstudents to answer the question.Here are some suggestions:Introduce students to possibletopics with each lesson orconcept presented. Solicit ideas.Inform students early in the yearthat they will be doing a sciencefair project and that they shouldbe thinking about a topic.Have students write down andassign priorities to areas ofinterest. 8Have the students gather moreinformation, only this time havethem be very specific. If the

topic is beyond you or thereferences in the school library,look to community resources orthe Internet. Students will be lessfrustrated if they first learn somebasic background knowledgebefore beginning.Have the students make thecommunity contacts. It may benecessary for you to make theinitial contact, but once this isdone, you will be able to call onthat person in the future.Encourage the students to thinkabout-what they want to find out,-what materials and equipmentare needed,-and how they’ll try to answertheir questions. 3. Preparing the research proposalStudents of all ages should have aplan of action. The sophistication ofthis portion of the project dependson the ability of the student, yourexpectations, and whether thestudent intends to participate in ascience fair.In all cases, theresearch proposal should containbackground information, a problemor purpose or hypothesis, anexperimental plan, and references.Here are some suggestions: Have each student prepare aproject proposal. Remind the students to write themethods and materials section sothat anyone could read them anddo the experiments.Do notwrite this section in steps, e.g.,Step 1, Step 2, and so on.Review each proposal anddetermine whether the project is:- feasible for the student to do,- Safe,- experimentally sound, e.g.,experiments are controlled andonly one variable at a time istested,experimentsarereplicable. (This is important ifstatistics will be applied.)Do not allow students to begintheir projects until they have yourapproval and have done theirbackground research.Meet with each student andreview the project proposal.Discuss any of the problems thatmight be encountered and thekinds of data he or she expectsto collect.Discuss how and where the dataare to be recorded.4. Conducting the experiment(s)This part of the project has thetendency to generate excitementbecause of the anticipation that hasbuilt up in the planning stages.Students will approach this part at ahigh energy level and must bemonitored carefully so that theyoperate safely. This is also the timewhen problems will crop up. Toavoid some of these problems, wesuggest: Make certain that students havea notebook for recording dataand that they have made planson how to do so, e.g., tables,charts, sketches, computers. Have the students prepare ascheduleforconducting9

experiments and record it in theirnotebooks.Make sure that proper safetyprocedures are followed.Encourage the students toapproach the experiment in aconservative fashion and not put“all their eggs in one basket.” Inother words, conduct somepreliminary tests and refine theprocedures as necessary. Recordany revisions in the notebook.Monitor progress frequently atthis stage. 5. Analyzing and interpreting thedataIn this section you will most likelyneed to spend extra time monitoringthe student’s progress. Analyzingand presenting one’s data isextremely important because theycan facilitate the interpretive processand the formulation of conclusions.If students have not had practice inpreparing graphs and tables, or indoingsimplemathematicalcalculations, then it may be prudentto present a lesson at this point.Here are some suggestions that maybe helpful. Quantitative data usually are bestpresented in tables and graphswith the aid of graphing softwaresuch as Excel.Have someexamples on hand, such as thosefound in journals, textbooks, oreven from the work of otherstudents. Insist that advanced studentsapply simple statistics such ascalculating the mean, standarddeviation, standard error of the mean, t-tests, or Chi-square.Remember, experimental designis important when it comes to theapplication of statistics.Coach the students to prepare anarrative in their notebooks thatpresents the data and refers tographs and tables.A resultssection that includes only a tableor graph and no text is notcomplete.Emphasize that results are bestpresented in a straightforwardmanner, with no conclusions orvalue judgments. (This is hardfor most students to do, but is askill one can develop.) Instead,significant data should be pointedout.Remind students that the use ofphotographs, sounds, and evenvideos are excellent ways toreport qualitative data and toshowcomparisonsorrelationships. However, cautionthe students to keep the mediafocused more on the science thanon entertainment, so that it doesnot distract from the project.6. Interpreting and discussing theresultsNow it’s time for the students toexplain what they think the resultsmean. Again, this is a skill thatmany students have not fullymastered and is one that improveswith practice. The tendency is forstudents to make statements thatare not supported by the data. Ifthe data have been analyzed andpresented in a satisfactory manner,inferences can be made more easily.10

final report by simply giving them alist of the components. But if thestudentshavefollowedtheguidelines up to this point, most ofthe material should already becompleted either in their researchproposals or in their notebooks.Herearesomeadditionalsuggestions.If not, frustration tends to build inboth the teacher and the students.Be patient and consider thesesuggestions. Have the students prepare a listof conclusion statements and anypossible patterns (interpretationsof the data) and write them intheir notebooks.Meet with each student and goover the statements. If studentsare working in groups on aproject, meet with all of them atthe same time. Some teacherswill have sessions where studentspresenttheirdataandconclusions to the class. This istimes consuming, but it is veryeducational for the students andmay give them some new ideas.Students could even createPowerPoint presentations.Once conclusion statements havebeendeveloped,havethestudents prepare a writtendiscussionthatincludesdescriptions of any patterns orrelationships that they think aremeaningful. In effect, they arepreparing a defense of theirproject conclusions. Decide what you want in the finalreport before students begin theirprojects.(Studentsdoingprojects for science fairs will needto include all the suggestedcomponents in the section onHow To Do a ScienceProject.) This is also a greatopportunity to team up with alanguage arts teacher andintegrate your curriculum withthe language arts teachings intechnical writing.Before students begin preparingtheir final reports, review theformat and explain what youexpect.8. Preparing for the oral reportIf you have used science projects asa class activity, then you should giveeach group or individual theopportunity to share the results ofthe research with the class. This isimportant in building communicationskills and can serve as a source ofinformation about science for otherstudents. It is also the job of allscientists to communicate what theyhave learned from their research.Here are some suggestions:7. Preparing the final reportWhether students are working ingroups or as individuals, it isimportant that you require a finalwritten report. The format of thisreport is up to you, the teacher, butwe suggest you follow the outlinepresented in the next chapter of thisbook. It would be unfair to assumethat students could instantly write a11

Limit the presentations to amaximumof10minutes,followed by 5 minutes ofquestions from the class.Have students pattern the formatafter the written report: title,introduction, statement of theproblem or hypothesis, methods(brief), discussion, and analysis &conclusions.Allow the group reports to belonger because every member ofthe group must be involved insome aspect of the oralpresentation.Help prepare students competingin science fairs. They won’t havetimed presentations, but they willhave to explain their projects tojudges. Many teachers will havestudents who are preparing forscience fairs present their projectresults to other students andundergo intense questioning oftheir conclusions. This is goodpractice and sharpens theirpresentations. Secure registration information,rules and regulations, and otherrequirements from the sciencefair director well in advance ofthe science fair. Included in thisinformation should be instructionsand size limitations for scienceproject displays.Have students prepare a planillustrating the layout of theirdisplays before any actualconstruction begins. There areseveral references in this bookthat are useful and containinformation that is ecurriculum with the art teacher.A couple of other pointers canhelp you throughout the process. Ourfirst suggestion is to establish aschedule at the outset, so that eachstudent knows what’s expected of them.Science projects take time to plan andcomplete; therefore, careful planningmakes the work more enjoyable for thestudent and the teacher, especially if

A guide for Secondary School Teachers Authors and Acknowledgements: This second edition was produced at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) through the laboratory’s Office of Education Programs, under the leadership of the Manager, Dr. Cynthia Howell, and the guidan