How do Sci-Fair Finalists conceive of winning topics?

QuantMech
Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:05:02 +0000

A lot of students work with science faculty, either because they live within driving/bus/commuter train distance of a university or because they participate in a summer program at a university. The titles that look totally unfamiliar to a high school student may well come from this kind of faculty-student collaboration. It is worthwhile to the faculty member, because many are concerned about developing interest in science in the next generation. Often, a grad student or post-doc will work most closely with the high school student, to reduce the demands on the faculty member’s time.

One of the students who place fairly high in Intel worked with a faculty member at my university. As soon as I heard the title, I could tell which faculty member he had worked with, and I could also trace the intellectual provenance of the topic back to 1953 without looking anything up. That is not to say that the student was not deserving. In fact, he was very smart and hard-working, and he wound up accomplishing some significant research. On the other hand, he was certainly pointed in the right direction by a faculty member.

In a number of fields, with some mastery of basic material at the AP level and the ability to read scientific papers, you can put together a reasonable project while still in high school.

In fact, at many universities, the Ph.D. students have the general outlines of their projects suggested by their research advisers. They have to problem-solve and trouble-shoot along the way, and if they are observant, they may spot a really interesting direction themselves, as an offshoot of the project that the professor suggested. This may become the major portion of their Ph.D. theses. But scientists don’t tend to work in a vacuum. Even the faculty interact a lot, and often have multiple collaborators (as well as some things they explore more or less alone).