October
16, 2009
Dear Science
Teacher/Principal/Parent:
The Bartlesville
District Science Fair Committee invites your students to participate in the 2010
Bartlesville District Science Fair. We
are proud to celebrate our 57th anniversary of providing this
competitive science and engineering opportunity to our area students.
Entry or placement
at a school science fair is not required for students to apply to the District
Science Fair. There are separate
Elementary and Junior/Senior Fairs with two age divisions in each Fair. Elementary Division I is
for grades 1-3; Elementary Division II is for grades 4-6; Junior Division is
for grades 7-9; and Senior Division is for grades 10-12. The Elementary
Fair will be Friday, March 5, 2010,
starting at 5:30 p.m., and the Junior/Senior
Fair will be Saturday, March 6, 2010, starting at 7:30 a.m., at the
In addition to the
awards presented at the District Science Fair, up to 30 student projects will
be selected for subsequent competition at the Oklahoma State Science and
Engineering Fair (OSSEF) in
We sponsor the
Bartlesville District Science Fair as an opportunity to promote science,
mathematics and engineering education.
We know that schools operate on a tight budget and hope that the Science
Fair helps teachers enhance science curricula.
The Bartlesville
District Science Fair is an affiliated International Science and Engineering
Fair (ISEF), which means that we have to comply with the ISEF rules. The rules have minimal changes from last
year. These rules are mandatory for
Grades 7 and above at the Bartlesville District Science Fair. We encourage all students, teachers and
parents to be familiar with the rules, as they provide excellent guidance to
assure student safety. A handy tool for
helping students determine the exact forms they need is located on the ISEF
website at http://www.societyforscience.org/isef/students/wizard/index.asp.
The full ISEF handbook
is available at the following website, and includes rules, forms, and a student
handbook: http://www.societyforscience.org/isef/document/completerules2010.pdf.
To minimize paper, and to follow ISEF’s
lead, we are not ordering copies of these documents this year. Please download from this website and make
copies as needed.
Also included are
application forms for entry to the Bartlesville District Science Fair. Feel free to make as many copies as you and
your students need. Remember that these
are not the only forms required: Grade
7-12 students must prepare and submit all applicable ISEF forms.
You can find
further information on the State and International Fairs by looking on their
internet Web Pages (http://ossef.ecok.edu/
and http://www.societyforscience.org/isef/). They both include good resources for
information on science fair projects.
Some of the
stickiest issues with the rules continue to be experiments dealing with human
subjects, animals and microorganisms.
Projects involving human subjects must receive prior approval from an
Institutional Review Board before starting experimentation. Projects involving vertebrate animals and
microorganisms require prior approval from our Scientific Review Committee
(SRC); for these projects the student needs to prepare their research plan and
submit it to the SRC which is chaired by Jennifer Galvin (918-661-3865, 12 A1
PB, ConocoPhillips, Bartlesville, OK
74004). Remember, approvals
through an IRB or the SRC are required before any experimental work is
started. NOW is the time for students to
get these approvals going. Please remember: all 7-12th
grade projects require a minimum of forms 1, 1A, Research Plan Attachment, and
1B, filled out and approved, before experimentation begins.
Teams will be part
of the BDSF and the OSSEF competitions.
A team consists of no more than 3 students who are not allowed to
compete individually. There will be at
least one slot for a team to compete in the State competition from the District
Science Fair. We will reserve judgment
on sending a team to the International Competition pending evaluation of the
quality of the projects.
Applications
to the Bartlesville District Science Fair are due February 19, 2010;
entries received after Feb.
26, 2010, will not be allowed to compete or be judged.
Send to: Bartlesville District Science Fair,
If there are any questions regarding the Bartlesville District Science Fair, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Lee A. Carvell,
Director
Bartlesville
District Science Fair
c/o
Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP
213 Plastics
Technical Center
carvela@cpchem.com
(918) 661-3450