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It started as sort of a joke. I was interested in building a website where students looking for science project information would find something different. However, when I went looking for a domain name all the obvious ones had been taken.

The fact is the search engines index words, and are not necessarily very good at noticing a change in word order. In addition, remembering my own science fair activity, I would have to say in all honesty it was “fair science”.

We read about the National Science Fair winners, but they are the rare exception. Not only are they very bright they also have special circumstances which help them excell. For the average student the quality of the work is much less stellar.

However, that doesn’t mean it is without value or not worth doing.

During the season for science fairs all across America students and their parents are search for inspiration.  According to Wordtracker there are more than 25,000 serces per day  for science fair or science fair project.

On Ebay there are only a hundred active auctions for science fair related items.  That seems like a tremendous miss-match.  Usually Ebay is filled with people trying to sell things.  There are usually more Ebay listings than searches.  This seems like an opportunity.

I wonder if collectors seach Ebay first and don’t think about the web and for science fair projects students, parents and teachers scour the web and don’t think about Ebay as a source.  That seems like quuite the opportunity for someone.

Science is important.  Even those with no particular interest in a science career need to know how their bodies work, how medications can effect them and many other things about how the world works.  Without a good science education this is impossible.

Now that I have a daughter teaching at the high school level and judging science fairs I have had to adjust my notions about what a website that attempts to provide science fair advice should contain.

The schools are looking for projects based on the “Scientific Method”, with a formal hypothesis, experimental design, data collection, and conclusions.  In my eperience this presents a somehat unrealistic picture of how scientific discoveries are actually made.  In reality, accidents, observations of odd behavior and other unplanned events drive much of the discovery process.

I was reading recently that 3M company was considering writing a book on how some of their major discoveries (teflon, post-it notes) came about.  While doing the research for the book they found it made them look like a [ack of idiots.  The discoveries always came about when a researcher doing one thing happened to notice something else.

In some ways it reminds me of the old advertising joke which says “We know we waste half our advertising budget, unfortunately, we don’t know which half.”  The scientif version of that is you must have people working on experiments and projects in order for accidential events to happen.  The frustration is the process is much less directed and controlled than is usually thought.

How could you get a budget approved if you asked for money to fool around until you stumble upon something interesting?