A science fair is generally a competition where contestants present their science project results in the form of a report, display board, and models that they have created. Science fairs allow students in grade schools and high schools to compete in science and/or technology activities.
Although writing assignments that take a long time to complete and require multiple drafts are fairly common in US schools, large projects in the sciences (other than science fairs) are rare. Science fairs also provide a mechanism for students with intense interest in the sciences to be paired with mentors from nearby colleges and universities, so that they can get access to instruction and equipment that the local schools could not provide.
In the United States, science fairs first became popular in the early 1950s, with the ISEF, then known as the National Science Fair. Interest in the sciences was at a new high after the world witnessed the use of the first two atomic weapons and the dawn of television. As the decade progressed, science stories in the news, such as Jonas Salk’s vaccine for polio and the launch of Sputnik, brought science fiction to reality and attracted increasing numbers of students to fairs.
Common science fair topics are Botany, Engineering, Behavioral, Physics, Medicine/Health, Weather, Zoology, Microbiology, Biology etc.
Read more about Science Fair: Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words science and/or fair:
“The negative cautions of science are never popular. If the experimentalist would not commit himself, the social philosopher, the preacher, and the pedagogue tried the harder to give a short- cut answer.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“Fine knacks for ladies, cheap, choice, brave and new,
Good pennyworths,—but money cannot move:
I keep a fair but for the Fair to view,—
A beggar may be liberal of love.
Though all my wares be trash, the heart is true,”
—Unknown. Fine Knacks for Ladies (l. 7–8)