Backtalk: Engineering fairer science fairs

Students who come from wealthy families and schools often have an advantage when it comes to science fairs. Parents with the time and resources to do so often get involved in every stage of the science fair project, enabling their students to create projects that are far beyond what they could achieve on their own. Todd L. Pittinsky suggests adding constraints by requiring students to develop projects based on a small list of items. Such constraints would not only spark student creativity, they would help level the playing field.