Secrets of Successful Science Projects
  Over the past several years, the authors have served as teachers, qualified scientists, mentors, and/or parents on dozens of science projects. These projects ranged from elementary school projects that can be completed in a weekend to high school and college freshmen projects that take a semester or year to complete and yield published scholarly papers and/or compete at the highest national and international levels. This article describes what we have observed to be important to success. 
Amy Courtney and Michael Courtney
physics.ed-ph physics.pop-ph