Although every student who enters a science fair would like to win first place, there is no way to guarantee that you will. However, you can take a number of steps to help you get closer to winning that cherished first-place ribbon.
Subject
If you want to win first prize, you should cover a science topic that will capture viewers' interest. For instance, with all of the advances in cybernetics, you could design a timeline and progression of prosthetic limbs to show how close humanity is getting to the end goal. A simple hook, a motion-controlled prosthetic and a robotic limb that works based off of electrical impulses would provide physical representations of the research you've done, and they would give the audience something concrete to witness. Other possible, currently relevant topics include climate change, recycling, energy and alternative transportation.
Answer the Question
Every science project is meant to answer some question or to satisfy some curiosity. If you can find a creative way to answer a question, then your project might earn a great deal more interest and prestige. For instance, you could answer the question of where we can get enough fuel to make alternative energy a major force by pairing modern waste treatment plants with digestors, which are machines that use animal and even human waste to generate electricity. Researching the machine's efficiency and showing potential solutions that could recycle the waste people create naturally to create a useful commodity could help you come up with an interesting answer to a question.
Presentation
You could have the greatest scientific achievement of the century, but chances are good that if you present it only with a single poster board showing a couple of paragraphs of text, no one will be interested. Presentation is an integral part of a first-place project. As such, you should have as many ways to involve viewers as you can. Playing sound or video clips, providing physical examples or demonstrations of your research, and using bright colors to draw the eye are all good strategies. It's also important that you be able to answer questions about your project, showing how much you learned about the subject.
Previous Winners
If you want to win first place, it pays to examine the work of previous first-place winners to see what their projects were about. For instance, if every first-place winner for five years has had a project about medicine, then you've found something in common that you may want to capitalize on. Alternatively, if all the winners did a project about a local phenomenon to make their projects important to viewers, you should keep that in mind as well. There is no guarantee of winning first, since it's up the the judges, but if you choose a subject that's scientifically relevant, important to viewers, interesting and well presented, then you've done quite a lot to improve your chances of winning.
Tags: answer question, first place, important viewers, project about, their projects
