The email that I received from Julie, who judges a kids' science fair every year:

subject: tales from the science fair

Today my favorite interview was with Anthony, a 5th grader sporting a ponytailed Mexi-mullet halfway down his back. His project was all about tornadoes, and he was quite a talker. He just answered all the questions we would have asked without asking him and ended with, "And then I thought that the display needed more color so I started drawing tornadoes in marker all over it." He talked about cyclones, twisters, water spouts, and the like. He talked about tornadoes lifting and safely depositing sleeping babies. he talked about a tornado causing a frog rainstorm from a pond it sucked up in a nearby town. He told us that you should never try to outrun a tornado. he told us lots.

Some kids listed display supplies along with experiment supplies. As in:
9V battery
2 long screws
construction paper
poster board
10 feet of wire
pencil
paper
glue

On the back of the project, each student filled out a sheet that included a spot for any adult help they received. I love how some kids say that their parents bought their supplies and made sure they didn't cut themselves.

My second favorite thing was how most of the projects had "Did you ever wonder" in the intro.
...whether a matchstick could pick up an icecube? (no)
...how a radiometer works? (again, no. I still don't even know what a radiometer is)

But by far, my favorite thing was the text boxes from a project called, *Mars, Neptune, and the Sun.* Neptune's write-up was something like-

"Did you ever wonder about the planet Neptune? Well, it is blue and cold. And that is just some of the things about the planet Neptune. Here are the rest." the rest being 2 sentences.

Then, "But one thing bothers me and that is why is it blue and where did it come from? But that is all there is to know about Neptune."

OH, and I learned that dolphins were sexually promiscuous.

the end.