Writing an Abstract

An abstract is a summary of the whole science fair project and should be written towards the end. The abstract should include a sentence or two from each phase of the project. The abstract does not need to be very long, maybe a half a page to three quarters of a page of a decent sized font.

Pretend someone asked a student, "What was your science fair project about?" The student will probably include some words on their purpose or question, a few words on their background information, a few words on their hypothesis and variables, some words on how they did their experiment, some words on their results, and a few words about their conclusion.  These are all the parts in the correct order of an abstract. One helpful hint if a student is having trouble writing an abstract is to ask them this very question and encourage them to verbalize their answer before writing it.

Here is an abstract question stem from Williamsclass.com Science Fair Guide: "Writing the Abstract"

Fill in the following lines to create a successful Abstract:

The purpose of my science fair project was ________________________

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An interesting piece of background knowledge is ___________________

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My hypothesis for this project was______________________________

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The constants and control in my experiment were____________________

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 The variables in my experiment was _____________________________

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The conducted my experiment by ________________________________

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The results of this experiment were (just the most important) ___________

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The results show that my hypothesis was wrong or right because 

____________________________________________________________

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If I were going to do this experiment again in the future or expand on this experiment I would

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Sample Abstract:

Abstract

Rocketry has been around for a long time. Scientists, people who build model rockets and the military all use different kinds of rockets. Studying rockets is important because it helps us to learn about outer space. This project is using different amounts of water and air to make rockets fly. My hypothesis was that more water will make the rocket fly the longest. The independent variable was the different amounts of water and the dependent was the time in seconds that the rocket flew. I used a two liter bottle and a bottle launcher. I launched the bottle filled 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, and the whole two liter bottle with water. The longest flight was the 1/3 filled bottle. It went 10.5 seconds. The whole bottle went 1.5 seconds and this was the shortest flight. The rocket barely got off the launcher. My hypothesis was incorrect. The least amount of water flew the longest. This happened because there was more air and less mass to get off the ground. The most amount of water had too much mass and too little air to fly.