
Communicate your findings
A student’s ability to clearly communicate and present their findings in a persuasive manner is a key science & engineering practice.
Preparing a science or engineering project presentation will entail reviewing the information they’ve documented in their lab notebook and preparing to summarize and communicate that information in a clear manner. This involves being intentional about what to extract from the lab notebook with an understanding that not everything will be included in the presentation.
Create a project presentation
Depending on the requirements of the specific science fair, project presentation submissions may be physical (on a project board) or digital (as a slide deck).
Some school fairs may require a physical submission. Generally, these are presented on a standard, three-panel display board, measuring 48″ wide and 36″ tall, and high school projects go as tall as 108″ and no wider than 48″.
Submissions for the 2023 SARSEF Regional Science and Engineering Fair will be digital only. Slide decks should be formatted as a multi-page pdf, consisting of a maximum of 15 slides with 14 pt font. For the in-person high school interviews, project displays of the slide decks will be provided by SARSEF.
Project presentation sections
Lab Notebook
If presenting a physical project, lab notebooks can accompany the project board. If submitting a digital project presentation, scan some key pages of the notebook to upload. The scanned lab pages will be uploaded as a separate file from the project slides.
Important notes for digital submissions
- The student’s name should not appear on the project presentation. If a physical board, the name can be on the back. If a digital submission, the name can be in the file name.
- Use a font size of at least 14pt for the text on the slides. It’s acceptable to use 10pt fonts for captions on pictures and tables.
- The first slide must be a Title slide or Quad chart.
- Slide decks should be in landscape orientation with a page size of 8.5″x11″
- Maximum of 15 slides for the project presentation pdf
- No links or hyperlinks are permitted (except as a source for an image or on the references page)
- Photos or drawn diagrams are encouraged to present non-numerical data, to propose models that explain the results, or just to show the experimental setup.
- Do not include photos of faces. Even photos of the student should be from the back or side and then only if it shows them engaged in their project.
- Every picture and image should have captions that include the source of the image.
- There will be 4 places to upload files in the registration: SRC forms (as required), project slides, lab notebook pages (optional, but encouraged), and a research paper (optional, but strongly encouraged for high school).