Designing and executing a project can deepen your knowledge and understanding of tectonic plates.
Create a strong and original science project on plate tectonics. By reading your textbook, talking to your teacher and reading scientific journals on plate tectonics, you can come up with an original project idea. Base your hypothesis, or theory, about the outcome of your experiment on hard facts. Analyze your data using graphing software and quantify the statistical significance of your work. Finally, create a visually striking presentation.
Instructions
1. Find a project topic. You can read science project books to get listings of plate tectonics projects, but these projects will generally have been done many times before. Consider doing an original study that will really impress your teacher and, more importantly, deepen your personal knowledge of the subject. Start by reading journal publications to identify current questions in plate tectonics that interest you. Then, speak to your teacher to find a way to do a project on plate tectonics using the resources at your high school or middle school. If such resources are simply unavailable at your school, but you are really motivated to work on the project that you have identified, reach out to local university researchers and ask them if they will consider letting you do a project in their lab. College professors are often excited about the possibility of developing young talent in science.
2. Come up with an experimental procedure, based on past research protocols that you can find in published research experiments. Or come up with a unique procedure with the guidance of your science teacher and/or experts in the field. Perform your experiment and record your observations. If you choose to build a model of tectonic plates, base it on specifications found in scientific literature, and make it as detailed and nuanced as possible.
3. Analyze the data you recorded in your observations. If applicable, graph it with graphing software. If you identify trends relevant to tectonic plates, ask your teacher for help with conducting analysis on the data to determine of the trends are statistically significant, if they could be applied to actual tectonic plates or if they are only applicable to your experiment.
4. Use visuals of your tectonic plate experiments to fill out your project presentation. If you built a tectonic-plate model, show it to your science class and explain the significance of all the components. Or take photos of your experiments, and mount them on a poster, along with descriptions of your hypothesis, procedure, data, results, and conclusions.
Tags: plate tectonics, your teacher, tectonic plates, your experiment, deepen your
