Students need help while submitting their projects. Whenever a student tries to start their science project, they are in a dilemma what topic to choose and write about. Most of the times topics are provided by the teachers or are included in the syllabus, but every time it is not the same case everywhere.So to get a good guidance follow the steps below:
- Brainstorming and catchy topics
Sometimes it happens that a student is provided with a broader topic or may be no topic at all. Those are the times when a student falls in a dilemma. Suppose a topic given is water but there are several subtopics about water. Like, there are different sources of water, its states, minerals in it, aquatic flora and fauna, water cycle, etc. Thus it is impossible for someone to fulfil a science project within 3 – 5 pages.
When a studentis provided with a broad topic, the first and most important thing is to shorten the topic since that is better to manage. At first, research needs to be done before shortening the topic. This leads to a better knowledge about which topic is much informative. Some suitable guidelines below are given to choose a suitable topic:
- Pick a topic of your interest. It is easier for you to research about a topic that is appealing to you.
- While scrolling for a topic, you may find it boring. Therefore you have option to chance your topic once you don’t find any interest towards it.
- Choose a topic that is familiar you, so that when you research on You get to build up your knowledge on that topic too.
- While researching on any topic first check out how much information you are able to If you see that there is less information or some huge amount of information, then leave the topic and search for another one.
- While writing, keep in mind to keep your topic open. Suppose while writing, you find another topic more interesting, then you can add that topic by just modifying some minor things.
- The ultimate and most important thing is that the topic you are writing about must match the guidelines set by your teacher and curriculum.
- Gathering important information
While searching for information, you get several resources to find them. The first place you need to visit is a library. In a library, you can ask the librarian to help you to find books on the chosen topic. There are also other sources like encyclopaedias and most importantly the internet.
The Internet is helpful as well as dangerous to use in both ways. The Internet contains more and up-to-date information than in printed books and encyclopaedias. On the other hand, you may confuse yourself whether the information are factual or someone’s opinion.
Science terms are complex, and you may not find everything about those in normal encyclopaedias. For that, you need to use science encyclopaedias that contain detailed information about the term. These are reliable sources to use.
Most important part of a science project is observations. You may gather information and theory about the topic, but ultimately your own observations, data, results and conclusions are required to make the project unique and appealing. Keep a track on your experiments and data, and if required you can display those in forms of charts and graphs.
- Organising the gathered information
Some people have the tendency to freak out while organising the gathered information. They are not sure of where to start and where to end. Always organise the information in such a way that you can add several other ideas under any subtopic. The ways in which organisation can be done are:
- Here, basically you need to sketch a map in your head and state the main topic of your project.
- Jot down all the topics, subtopics and points gathered to arrange them according to your requirements. While making a list, it is better to use the computer as you can add information in between if required.
- Formats to be used for your project
According to the topic selected, the layout plays an important role in displaying the information. The better your layout is, the more your topic is displayed.
- Process: It is the first step that contains the theory part explaining the process how something works.
- Cause and effect: This is a basic science project format that says the causes and effects of any experiment. That is if ‘X’ has occurred then ‘Y’ has happened.
- Specific to general: This method is applicable when you try to end or draw conclusions to a particular topic.
- Climatic order: It contains the main part of the information. The details are ordered from most important to least ones
- General to specific: In this subpart, the main topic is elaborated and explained generally. Then the sub-topics are explained along with its supportive explanations.
- Compare and contrast: This part is mainly to compare two or more sub-topics. There are two patterns to display the same. They are block-patternand alternative-pattern. In a block pattern, at first, you write about the first topic and its details followed by the second one and its details on the side. While in analternative pattern, the first topic is described and then the second one in different paragraphs.
Conclusion
At the end, it is mandatory to state the acknowledgement and bibliography as from where the information is gathered, and this data is observed and noted down.