How to Write Your Abstract
How to Write Your Abstract
An abstract is a brief, written discussion of your Science Fair Project. It gives the essence of the project in a brief but complete form. it should not exceed 250 words, and must focus on the current year's research. Details and discussions should not be included in the abstract, but may be put in the full, written research paper (if required), or presented on the project exhibit board. After reading the abstract, judges and the public should have an accurate idea of the project. Each abstract consists of a brief statement of the most important, thoughts about your project. Abstracts should summarize, clearly and simply, the main points of the experiment and/or the main sections of the report, which include the:
Purpose of the Experiment
• An introductory statement of the reason for investigating the topic of the project.
• A statement of the problem or hypothesis being studied.
Procedures Used
• A summarization of the key points and an overview of how the investigation was conducted.
• An abstract does not give details about the materials used unless it greatly influenced the procedure or had to be developed to do the investigation.
• An abstract should only include procedures done by the student. Work done by a mentor (such as surgical procedures) or work done before student involvement must not be included.
Observation/Data/Results
• This section should provide key results that lead directly to the conclusions you have drawn.
• It should not give too many details about the results nor include tables or graphs.
Conclusions
• Conclusions from the investigation should be described briefly.
• The summary paragraph should reflect on the process and possibly state some applications and extensions of the investigation.
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An Example of An Abstract: (The following example has been altered to remove the uses of “I’, “my”, etc.)
The purpose of this project was to find out whether the angle of the Sun’s rays at noon affects seasonal temperatures. The experiment involved measuring the air temperature and the angle of the Sun’s rays at noon during different seasons. This was done by recording air temperature and measuring the angle of shadows at noon on the first day of the month from October through April.
The measurements confirmed the hypothesis that as the angle of the Sun’s rays decreases during the year, the outdoor temperature increases. These findings led to the inference that seasonal temperatures are the result of the difference in the angle of the Sun’s rays. As the ray angle decreases, sunlight is more concentrated on an area, resulting in a higher temperature.
It was discovered that during seasons with temperatures, the angle of the Sun’s rays is lower than during seasons with low temperatures.
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