Procedure

Registration for Grade 5 - 12 Projects is a two step process.

STEP 1: School Registration (Open January 8 - February 26, 2024)

Each school should identify ONE contact teacher.  That teacher should go to the TSF website and register their school using the google form found on the registration page. This form indicates that a school is intending to send students to participate in this year’s TSF.  Please help TSF plan the 2024 fair by completing this form as soon as you can, by February 5th if at all possible. Teachers will be asked to estimate the number of projects that they will be sending to the fair.  TSF realizes that this total may change but your best estimate will help us plan to provide sufficient space for the projects.

For Home-schooled students: 

• Please complete the School Registration form using a parent/guardian as the teacher contact.

For Independent entries: 

• An independent entry is one in which the student is attending a public or private school, but that school is not doing science fair this year even to the extent of encouraging small groups of students to participate.  This is a student who is working on their own outside of classroom and school expectations. Such students are to be congratulated on their initiative and are encouraged to discuss their plans at an early stage with a teacher and ask this teacher to act as the contact for the purpose of registration.   This teacher would register their school and indicate that they expect to send only one project.  They would receive the student project registration link and would pass it on to the Independent Entry.   This staff member would also be asked to confirm that the school is not sending other projects to TSF 2024 so that we can be sure that project quotas are respected.   If this is not possible, students wishing to participate as an Independent Entry should contact TSF at torontosciencefair@gmail.com. 

A link to a project registration form for students will be sent to each contact teacher beginning on February 27, 2024.  The contact teachers will be asked to pass along this link to the students from their school who have been selected to attend TSF 2024.

STEP 2: Project Registration (Open February 27 - March 6, 2024)

Students receive a link to the Student Project Registration form from their teacher.  Students must complete and submit this form by Wednesday, March 6, 2024.  If there are two students working on a single project, only one student needs to complete this form.  

All Students will need to Complete Consent form as part of the registration process.

Grade 5-6 Science Workshops

A special hands-on workshop has been prepared for Grade 5-6 students and they do not need to choose a workshop. 

Grade 7-12 Science Workshops

All Grade 7-12 students will participate in one science workshop on the day of the fair.  Students will make their choices of workshop on the project registration form.  Please see below for a description of the workshops. 

1. Oil Extraction from an Orange 

Room 436 – Centennial College, (Maximum 22 students) 

Did you know you can extract oil from an orange peel? Use chemistry to make it happen in this special workshop. 

Presenter: Dr. Andrew Baer

2. Cells and DNA 

Room 452 – Centennial College (Maximum 22 students) 

An exploration of the building blocks of life viewed under a microscope and extraction of genetic material from common food items. 

Presenter: Dr. Samiha Mohammad Sharif

3. Microbial Fuel Cells: Generating electricity using the power of mud

Room 454 – Centennial College (Maximum 22 students) 

Did you know that you could generate electricity from the soil from your backyard? Many different microbes naturally living in the soil beneath your feet are capable of generating electricity. Attend this session for a hands-on experience with microbial fuel cells. 

Presenter: Dr. Nalina Nadarajah

4. Build your city with Architectural Technology 

Room 332 – Centennial College (Maximum 35 students) 

Do you like to draw? Do you like to build? In architecture you can do both. Attend this session to find out more about architecture and construction and how it combines the arts and engineering. Look at samples of student projects, career pathways plus demonstrations and hands on exercises using 2D and 3D drawing software. 

Presenters: Prof John Romanov &Prof Francis Lapointe

5. Natural and Synthetic Polymers 

Room EV112 – UTSC-EV Building (Maximum 16 students) 

Students will study the properties of some natural and synthetic polymers during our chemistry session.  They will isolate casein (natural protein) from milk and check its melting point and infra-red (IR) spectra.  Students will discover  polymers in diapers and learn about their structure and properties.  They will also make similar polymer in a lab.  The last part of the lab experiment will be “forensic” analysis of the unknown polymer wrap by using IR spectroscopy. 

Presenter:  Dr. Lana Mikaylichenko

6.  Mystery of the Stolen Laptop

Room – EV113 UTSC EV Building (Maximum 16 students) 

Students will take part in a series of short hands-on experiments focused on forensic investigation related to the stolen laptop. These activities include analysis of the unknown polymer wrap by using IR spectroscopy, ink chromatography, etc.  

Presenter:  Prof Kris Kim

7. Introduction to Geology: Room Catalyst Centre 

UTSC EV Building (Maximum 20 students) 

Discover the secrets of fossils and about the time and place where they lived. Check out the most common minerals that make up rocks and the Earth's crust and mantle. Play with an AR (Augmented Reality) sandbox to learn about how rain can change the Earth’s Surface. Check out how 3D printing can help us learn about geology. 

Presenter: Prof Heidi Daxberger

8. Tiny organisms – A Close Look

Room – 2 nd Floor Lab -UTSC SW Building (Maximum 24 students) 

Using compound microscopes and preparing your own sample, help us calculate how many living organisms we can find within a drop of pond water. Additionally, using dissecting microscopes, we will learn to differentiate females from males for spiders and insects.

9.  Introduction to AI for Discovery using Self-driving Labs

Room TBA  (Maximum 20 students) 

Self-driving laboratories (SDLs) incorporate AI and automation into scientific laboratories to speed up the discovery of new materials for applications such as clean energy and cancer drugs. Discover the essential principles of SDLs by building a ‘Hello World’ SDL. Together we will build a self-driving color matcher using dimmable LEDs and a light sensor. This introduction will help you implement hardware/software communication, database integration, microcontroller programming, and Bayesian optimization.  

Presenter:  Brandon Lines, Acceleration Consortium 

10. Ready, Set, Robot! Learning to work with robots Room

TBA (Maximum 20 students) 

Join us in this robot workshop where we teach you how to work with and program robots from scratch. Students will complete a fun challenge and program a robot using block coding, no prior knowledge is required! Start your path in robotics, learn about the Sense, Plan, Actuate paradigm, and have fun working with robots! This workshop is hosted and funded by the UofT Robotics Institute.”