ABSTRACT INSTRUCTIONS

An important part of your project is the abstract. The abstract tells the judges what your project is about, what you are trying to prove and how well prepared you are for competition.

In short, an abstract give the essence of information describing your project in a concise, but complete, form. The abstract must by typed and displayed with your project. Below are detailed instructions from Science Fair News that may be of help.

An abstract should include:

· The purpose of you investigation – what you attempted to prove or disprove. A good investigation should be set up to test a very definite question. The question should be simple and well defined. Include your hypothesis, an answer to your question.

· How the investigation was done – the basic details. Don’t go into minute details, but give the key points and the general plan of what you did. These may be numbered and listed.

· The results of the investigation. Do not give tables of all your data, but briefly state what you found. Indicate the number of times you repeated the experiment and give the average results.

· Your conclusion from the investigation: What has been proved, supported or disproved? What do your results mean? How can this information be used? Who can use this information? What have you learned?

· Finally, your abstract should be brief – 250 words or less – depending upon what you must describe (one typed page). Scientific papers are written in the third person singular and in the past tense.