Atoms at the Science Fair: Exhibiting Nuclear Projects

U.S. ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION/Division of Technical Information
Each year more students undertake science fair projects, many of which involve some aspect of nuclear science or technology.
The United States Atomic Energy Commission has prepared this booklet to help these young exhibitors, their science teachers, project counselors, and parents.
The booklet suggests also some of the numerous nuclear topics on which students can base meaningful science projects. It offers all exhibitors—regardless of age, experience, or project topic—advice on how to plan, design, and construct successful exhibits. It describes some rewards awaiting those who win their way to the National Science Fair-International, including 10 AEC Special Awards offered for the most outstanding nuclear exhibits.
Detailed advice on conducting science projects is omitted, partly because several earlier publications deal with the subject, but also because much of the personal satisfaction gained while doing a science project stems from the student investigator’s opportunity to exercise his initiative, imagination, and judgment in solving a problem of his own choice, in his own way.
We trust this booklet will encourage students to enter science fair competition, and hope it will help their advisers guide them toward better projects and more successful exhibits.
Edward J. Brunenkant, Director Division of Technical Information
by Robert G. LeCompte and Burrell L. Wood
United States Atomic Energy Commission Division of Technical Information
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 64-65589 1968
Interviews help AEC Special Awards judges identify the most outstanding nuclear-related exhibits entered in each National Science Fair-International. Here, Elizabeth Winstead of Jacksonville, Florida, explains her irradiated fruit flies to Dr. Paul W. McDaniel, AEC Director of Research and a Special Awards judge at the 1963 national fair, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Selected as one of the 10 winners, Miss Winstead and her science teacher spent a week at the Commission’s Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago.