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Hello; Teachers, Parents and budding science researchers If you haven’t entered the 2009 Mastodon Art/Science Fair, now is the time. This fair is going to be bigger and better than ever. The committee has put together some terrific activities and ASK rooms (Used to be Renaissance Rooms). Of course, your entries will make the fair even better!! I have some things to make you aware of. First of all, Mastodon Fair has again received a science coach grant for the 2009/2010 school year!! We will be selecting four teachers who will receive special, individualized attention along with their students and $1000.00. $100.00 of that money goes to the school, $900.00 goes to the teacher. The teacher is required to coach at least 10 students and at least five of those must enter the 2010 fair. There is much more information on this website. Another exciting prospect is to become an International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) Fellow. I’m inserting an email at this time with information and a website to get more information. This sounds like a great opportunity. I’ve been putting some serious thought into applying myself. Take a good look. Society for Science & the Public (SSP), with generous support from Intel, is pleased to announce the launch of its Fellows Program. The SSP Fellows Program provides funds and training to selected U.S. science and math teachers who serve under-resourced students, to enable interested and motivated students to perform high-quality independent scientific research. The SSP Fellows Program will attract the most creative and motivated high school science and math teachers in the country. Through a competitive selection process, the Program will provide teachers the financial and training resources necessary to support and inspire the success of their most enthusiastic science students. Fellows may serve for up to four years. The goal is to enable Fellows to guide students to produce project-based research of the highest quality, such as is selected for SSP’s premiere science competition, the Intel Science Talent Search. ELIGIBILITY: Demonstrated interest in research but actual research experience not required. Active engagement in 9-12 grade science or if not actively teaching at this time, must demonstrate access to students to mentor. Teaching credential. Must be from a school that has enrollment that is at least 40% underrepresented minority and/or with at least 30% of students qualified for free or reduced rate lunches. Demonstrated evidence of engagement with students (e.g. participation in field trips, science clubs, science fair, mentorship activities; support of independent research). Excellent written and oral communication skills. Must be able to attend Fellows Institute in Washington DC – July 27 through July 31, 2009. STIPEND: Fellows receive a stipend of up to $8500/year depending on proposed budget, demonstrated need, support of the school and needs of the student population. Deadline for application to the 2009 Fellows Program will be February 15, 2009 at 5:00pm EST. Successful applicants will be notified on March 5, 2009. http://outreach.societyforscience.org
For questions please contact At this time with your own science projects, you should be completing your experimentation analyzing your data and putting together a formal research paper if you are a high school student. Regarding your data, you should include a data table in your results and a graph. The graph should be a bar graph in most cases. Bar graphs are for data that includes a description and a no. For example, if your project says that plants with Nitrogen fertilizer grow taller than plants without Nitrogen fertilizer; you have two groups, plants grown with N fertilizer and plants grown without N fertilizer. Those are your descriptors. Use of N fertilizer or not is your independent variable. The descriptors (independent variable) go on the horizontal axis. The height of the plants is your dependent variable. Dependent variable information is usually a number and goes on the vertical axis. A line graph is when you have two sets of numerical data. For example if your hypothesis was plants given more N fertilizer grow taller than plants given less N fertilizer. The amounts of N fertilizer are your independent variables and again go on the horizontal axis of your graph. The height of the plants is again the dependent variable and the numbers go on the vertical axis. As you plot coordinates, you will have lines. Another type of graph is the pie graph and is only used when the results are in per cents. When doing data tables on computer programs such as excel, graphs are made automatically and the computer operator manipulates choices, and titles. It is perfectly fine for data tables and graphs to be done by the younger students. Some judges even prefer it. Hand made tables and graphs must be neat, clear and attractive. When doing data tables the independent variables are in the first left hand column and the dependent variable results are in columns to the right of the independent variable information. There should be a column for each trial. The last column should be a column for the averages of the trials.
You would make your bar graph from the above data. I said that high school students should be doing a formal research paper on their projects. This means that everything you have done from background information to experimentation to results needs to be in research paper format with annotations and a Bibliography. If you are confused about how to do this, consult with your language arts teachers. Who knows you may get extra credit!! The next time you hear from me will be about constructing your project display board.
Science Coaching Grant Refunded!!
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