Producing an award winning science fair project is not an easy task. The rules can be confusing and the writing is difficult to master. Let us help.

Below are some sample abstracts that will outline some of the most common problems with science fair projects, as well as a handful of glowing abstracts that should help you with the tricky writing process.

ISEF Sample Abstracts

The below PDF files contact 4 sample science fair projects. These are not real projects but they do demonstrate some of the common problems with forms and safety that need to be considered as well as problems with actual project execution. Read through these cases…Can you pick out the problems? How does your project measure up?

Case 1

Case 2

Case3

Case 4

What Does My Abstract Need to Include?

An abstract is constructed of 4 major parts:

What are the Abstract Parts?	What questions should I ask myself when writing my abstract if I conducted an experiment?	What questions should I ask myself when writing my abstract if I did an engineering design project?
Purpose of the Experiment	Why are you investigating this topic? What is your hypothesis?	What is your problem or need? Why are you designing this project?
Procedures/ Methods Used	What did you do? What steps did you take?	How did you design you prototype? What are your parameters for success?
Observations/ Data/ Results	What did you find? Any significant data?	Did your design meet the designated parameters for success? Did you redesign?
Conclusion	Does this change anything?	Does this change anything?

Check out these student abstracts to see how they met the criteria.

Abstract 1

Abstract 2