• Overview
  • Rules and Regulation
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Are you an aspiring scientist? Do you love research? Then this competition is for you! Design, conduct and share the results of your own study to a panel of esteemed judges. Don’t forget to use the scientific method!

​Procedures:

  1. Science Fair projects may not be used if they were presented at previous MIST tournaments/other competitions.
  2. A complete Science Fair Project consists of a research paper and a presentation.
  3. The presentation (5-7 minutes with 3 minutes for questions) can vary anywhere from a PowerPoint presentation to a display board with pictures. Competitors may include props, videos, pictures, etc. in their presentation. The purpose of the presentation is to summarize the question, hypothesis, methods, results, and future directions of the original research done by the competitor(s) and written about in the research paper.
  4. Although mentored projects are allowed to be submitted as a MIST Science Fair project, competitors should be explicitly aware of the following rules which apply to all science fair submissions:
          a. The competitor’s testable question and the hypothesis must be unique, original and the intellectual property of the competitor not the Mentor.
          b. The project must be within the scope and ability of the student presenters.
          c. All data and information presented as part of the science fair project must be the original work, ideas, words, and thoughts of the presenters and not the supervising authority at the Mentor Lab or Mentors. If other data must be entered, it has to be clearly cited to avoid plagiarism.
          d. All students must clearly differentiate between their own original intellectual property and that of their Mentors.

Submission Requirements:
  1. The research paper must be typed with 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, with 1” margins.
  2. Be 1,500-2,000 words long.
  3. Include a title page with the title of the research, MIST competitor(s) IDs, and name of this competition. Include a Table of Contents and an Abstract (250 words or less).
  4. Include an introduction section that states and explains a scientific research question and states the competitor(s) original hypothesis.
  5. Summarize the current research in the literature that aims at answering the research question and contain in-text citations where needed.
  6. Describe the method the competitors conducted to do their own active research to answer the research question. The active research may be comprised of experiments, surveys, questionnaires, etc.
  7. Summarize and explain the results collected by the competitors and include proper analysis (ie. statistical analysis where appropriate).
  8. Include a conclusion section.
  9. Include a works cited page/bibliography with references in the MLA format (a minimum of three references).