Re: I need to know how to write a abstract about my science project

Writing an abstract is like telling a story. Here is how I would do it.

Before you start, make sure you understand what your project is supposed to do. Is it supposed to test a law of science, medicine, psychology, or something else? If so, state the law and how you intend to test it.

For example, "My project will test the theory that dogs like orange rinds. To test this idea I am going to give orange rinds to 3 dogs and see if they eat them right away."

1. Write down an outline of what the project is about. Use this talk about your project. This works better than trying to remember things.
2. Tell a friend, parent, or fellow student about your project and take notes as you go.
3. Have you friend, parent, or fellow student ask questions and write down their questions. Pay special attention to questions about things in your project that they say are not clear or do not make sense.
4. Improve your outline to include new information you have gained from talking about the project.
5. Talk to someone else starting from the improved outline.
6. When you think you have it all together and the people you have talked to seem to understand pretty well, turn your outline into a full story.

During this process of talking about the experiment you should learn about possible problems or outside influences that may jeopardize your test hypothesis. In my example of dogs and orange rinds. I need to control how hungry the dogs are and I should make sure that the dogs are generally healthy so that I don't hurt them.

A good thing to use as an example is a board game (kids still plays those right?). Think of the game as performing an experiment. The instructions will tell you how to start, the rules of the game, and probably how to set up the board and other stuff that goes with the game.

Finally, after you do your experiments or build your project, you should talk about what you learned. Talk about the parts that were easy and did what you expected and also talk about the parts that were difficult or just plain did not work. An experiment that did not work as you expected is not necessary a failed experiment, especially if you learned something about how to do it better next time. Most science teachers are interested in the method of discovery not the results.

Back to my example. "I gave orange rinds to my dog, my grandma's dog, and my neighbor's dog 2 hours after each had eaten every other day, 6 times in total (11 days for the first feeding to the last). My grandma lets her dog eat all the time so it was tough to figure out when to give the orange rinds to her dog. All three dogs ate the rinds right away after the first feeding. My dog even begged for more everytime. I conclude based on this limited test of 3 dogs that dogs may like orange rinds."

Sincerely,

Tom "My Dog likes Orange Rinds" Cull