5. OBSERVATIONS AND DATA. Describe your observations. Include some of your observational data here as an example. You may wish to put the bulk of it in an appendix. 6. DISCUSSION OF RESULTS. Give the main conclusions your observations tend to prove or deny. (Disproval of your initial hypothesis may be as important as proof of it!) Include the evidence developed for each main conclusion and any exceptions, or for opposing theories. Offer possible explanations. Compare your results and interpretations with those of other workers in the same field. 7. NEW QUESTIONS, POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS, AND FUTURE PROJECTS, IF ANY. 8. APPENDIX. Give more detailed and supplementary information, often including graphs, tables, photographs, and drawings. 9. BIBLIOGRAPHY. Keep it brief, listing only those books and periodicals which you actually used to provide background information. 10. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. Both prudence and the best traditions of science require that you acknowledge all help which you receive. Usually student scientists do not produce laboratory work of professional quality, nor do student exhibitors match the skill of commercial designers and fabricators. Consequently, when judges encounter very exceptional unacknowledged work, they may reasonably wonder if the exhibitor received some professional help. And if on part, they speculate, on how much more? Result: they might be tempted to disqualify the exhibit entirely, whereas if you had acknowledged frankly—“Professor James Smith, Alpha University, for loan of four color transparencies”, or “My father, who devised the lighting system”—you might lose a point or two on their scorecards, but remain in competition. Your project notebook and your formal project report are important components of your exhibit to follow. If both are completed first, you will find planning the rest of your exhibit a much simpler task. EXHIBITING YOUR SCIENCE PROJECT Planning the Content of Your Exhibit Try to organize your exhibit content so that it will be meaningful to viewers who know less about it than you do. The following outline may be followed, but is not the only one possible. Don’t be afraid to let the unusual aspects of your project influence the organization of its exhibit. Title The same title you chose for your project report may be an acceptable exhibit title. It should be brief and as nontechnical as possible. A subtitle may explain or amplify the main title. The Summary Message (or Statement of the Problem) Give the viewer a capsule explanation of the project and its significance. You may use a simplified version of your abstract, eliminating information and language which is not meaningful to the average viewer. Keep it simple. Hypotheses and Conclusions List these briefly in a manner understandable to the average viewer. (Those interested in details can find them in your notebook and project report.)