The Display


The dis­play com­mu­ni­cates the essen­tial parts of the project in a quick, visu­al way. The dis­play should be stur­dy, free stand­ing, col­or­ful, sim­ply illus­trat­ed, well labeled, and attrac­tive.  The back­board may be made of peg­board, masonite, or ply­wood no larg­er than 76-cm (2.5 ft.) deep, a max­i­mum of 122-cm (4 ft.) wide, and a max­i­mum of 198 cm. (6.5 ft.) high (if placed on table) or 274 cm. (9 ft.) high (if placed on floor). (Of course, the dis­play does not need to be this large). An easy-to-han­dle fold­ing design is made from peg­board held togeth­er by three note­book rings between each sec­tion. Scrap wood can be cov­ered with fab­ric for an attrac­tive dis­play.  Try request­ing scraps at lum­ber­yards, con­struc­tion sites, hard­ware stores, or yardage stores before spend­ing mon­ey. Foam core or fold­ing back­boards may also be pur­chased from sci­ence or office sup­ply stores.

The title and sec­tion head­ings on the back­board should be clear­ly vis­i­ble and read­able from a dis­tance of three to four feet. Use com­ple­men­tary col­ors as back­ground and bright or dark let­ters for the titles of each section.

If using a com­put­er to gen­er­ate head­ings, use a bold­face font of at least 18 points.  Cut paper strips and frame and/or mount the title of each sec­tion.  A pho­to­copi­er can also be used to enlarge text for titles and sec­tion head­ings. The title should have the largest print on the dis­play board and be neat­ly done.

Enlarge graphs and use col­or for the dif­fer­ent lines or bars. Use pho­tographs that are clear and sharp, with the cor­rect expo­sure. A 5 x 7 pho­to cre­ates a bet­ter dis­play. There should be an expla­na­tion under each pho­to and graph.

Set the entire dis­play board flat on the floor and arrange the var­i­ous parts before begin­ning the final assem­bly.  Be cer­tain all titles, graphs, pho­tos, and text are lined up prop­er­ly and in place before glu­ing them down. Use rub­ber cement instead of glue so pieces can be replaced if nec­es­sary.  Make sure the edges of the paper are glued down secure­ly to the back­ing to pre­vent peel­ing or droop­ing lat­er.  All this atten­tion to detail will result in a dis­play board that is attrac­tive, easy to read and as neat as possible.

Note: all paper­work must be teth­ered to the dis­play board!

PLAN AHEAD—A GOOD DISPLAY TAKES TIME TO CREATE!

For a com­plete list of what is allowed/not allowed to be dis­played, please see the 2018 Screen­ing Sheet.

To know what judges are look­ing for, please see the Sci­ence Fair Rubric 2017.