Einstein Research Projects

The research project for the Dr. Albert Einstein Supernova Award is quite extensive and requires both a written and oral presentation of the project and its results.  This page repeats some material from our council's Supernova Mentor training, and includes a bit of additional material as well.  

Einstein Project Requirements (in brief -- see the guidebook for the full text) 

• Select a current STEM-related concern and develop a research project or experiment in that area. 
• Should be challenging and require a significant investment of time and effort (approximately 100 hours.) 
• If your mentor is not a specialist in this area, he or she will seek a specialist to serve as a STEM consultant.
• Execute the project or experiment. 
• Prepare a complete and well-documented written report AND an oral presentation. 
• Present both to your mentor and your local council Nova committee.

Note that these are the expectations for the project requirement alone of the Einstein Supernova Award.  There are other requirements that must be met to earn this award.   

Helping Your Youth Develop a STEM Project 

• Evaluate your youth’s past STEM experiences.  Could a past experience be the basis of the project?  Are there lingering questions worthy of investigation?  Maybe there’s a past STEM competition project that could be expanded or amplified.  Please note that the research or project is not required to be original.  (There is significant science involved in attempting to replicate another's results.)  
• Once you have the start of an idea, then other issues like resources, facilities, safety, and subject matter expertise need to be considered and addressed.
• This allows you to draft a plan, which will help you determine whether the project is feasible and at the right challenge level for your youth.

STEM Consultants

• There is a very good chance that your youth will choose a project in an area that is not where your expertise lies.  You have to judge for yourself whether you can and want to take on the research you’ll need to do to be an effective mentor for the content of your youth’s project.
• Consider recruiting a STEM Consultant.  It will give your youth an opportunity to work with an expert and glean information and tips that you won’t be able to offer, even if you do your homework.
• Your role is still quite significant.  You remain the youth’s Supernova mentor.  You will still be captain of the pep squad, the main sounding board, and the chief problem-solver, but someone else will handle the STEM content.
• It is up to you to find the STEM consultant, prep him or her, and ensure youth protection throughout the project.
• The consultant should come in before the plan is finalized, so he or she can help with that.

Targeting the Ideal Challenge Level

• How do you get the challenge level right for your youth?  As with the project development, begin by evaluating your youth’s past STEM experiences.  What knowledge and abilities does he/she already have? Where is his/her STEM frontier? 
• You might want to consider a project with progressively more challenging modules, all related to the same research question.  This allows for flexibility in finding a stopping point.  
• As the mentor, it’s wise to anticipate a broad range of difficulties that might arise over the course of the project.  For example, low motivation, an unrealistic schedule, insufficient knowledge base, unexpected equipment issues, unanticipated methodological problems, and so on, can all throw a wrench into the project, but each calls for a different response.  As much as possible, try to involve your youth in addressing these difficulties. This is part of meeting the challenges of the project and mimics the work of STEM professionals. 
• It’s the nature of STEM projects to morph over time.  The fine line you’ll need to walk here is making sure that you don’t abandon the no-more-no-less-no-different standard for completing this requirement.  As long as the project changes are well-considered and purposeful, you’ll very likely be on target  for meeting that standard.

Suggestions for the Written Report
This award is the first place in the STEM award program when youth are required to create a written report. Up to this point, youth always have options for creating reports that allow them to avoid a full-scale written report.  Here are some suggestions for helping youth complete this piece of the project.  

• Begin with a headings-and-subheadings-only outline of the written report as a part of the draft project plan. This will focus organizational thought on the final written report right from the beginning.  
• Revisit this outline periodically to revise and populate with details throughout the project.  This keeps attention on the written report and helps your youth peg progress towards completion throughout the project.  For example, methodology details can often be written well before results.  
• Consider a report format that includes a title page, abstract, table of contents, main body of material, and a list of references (using the format most common in the field of the project).  Attentiveness to spelling, grammar, usage, paragraphing, and formatting should be apparent in the final product, as if this report were going to be published.
• STEM professionals typically write several drafts of a paper before they consider it to be done.  Youth who are pursuing this award should expect to have to write more than one draft, with feedback and suggestions on each draft.  
• You and your youth might want to consider the following general standards of excellence that many STEM professionals consider when reading a research report.  (a) Is the synthesis of key ideas sufficiently focused, detailed, and coherent that the report makes sense?  (b) Is the relationship of key ideas to the project or experiment specific and defensible?  (c) Does the clarity and flow of information help the reader navigate the document and understand the content?  (d) Is the technical quality of the written report such that the report is ready for publication? 
• Please note that there are NO explicitly stated criteria for what is considered to be an acceptable written research report for this award. As the youth's mentor, you have to use some judgement about when you call it, and say that the youth has completed this piece of the project.  The usual Scout principle of genuine effort without necessarily achieving success should apply.  For this particular requirement, that standard will likely be met somewhere in between a first draft and a paper that is ready to submit for publication in a science journal.

Suggestions for the Oral Report
This award is the first place in the STEM award program when youth are required to create and present an oral report. Up to this point, youth always have options for creating reports that allow them to avoid a full-scale oral report.  Here are some suggestions for helping youth complete this piece of the project.  

• The best oral presentations are well practiced.  This is the first, and in some sense, the only suggestion that really matters.  All other suggestions are meaningless if this one is not followed.  Practice in front of a mirror.  Practice in front of friends and family.   Practice, practice, practice.   
• Help your youth find a way to have some visual elements to the presentation.  These could include photos on a posterboard, a powerpoint presentation, a slide show, a "tour" of a website, a YouTube video, and so on.  
• Although members of the local council Nova committee are likely STEM professionals, they may not be specialists in the STEM research area your youth investigated.  Thus, your youth needs to prepare an oral presentation that is accessible to a general audience of STEM-knowledgeable people.  This means that the audience will need explanations/definitions of jargon, orientations to graphs and charts, and understandable contexts for the results.
• Your youth should be aware that people will ask questions, and part of the process is his or her ability to respond to these questions.  Responses to these questions are strong indicators of his or her command of the material.   
• The best oral presentations are well practiced.  This is the last, and in some sense, the only suggestion that really matters.  All other suggestions are meaningless if this one is not followed.  Practice in front of a mirror.  Practice in front of friends and family.   Practice, practice, practice!