History Main / ScienceFair

* An episode of ''Webcomic/BobAndGeorge'', in which Dr. Cossack's daughter builds a self-aware robot and actually ends up losing to a papier-mâché volcano! She lived in the Soviet Union, and since they couldn't use the usual method of consulting the preserved head of JosefStalin (Dr. Wily stole it), they gave it to the other guy because they thought a boy winning would be better for the country.

* A recent {{Omake}} of ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' is a "Literature/{{Cinderella}}" parody for [[MadScientist sparks]], so the [[strike:prince]] twin princes are throwing a science fair, and there ''is'' a [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20081126 volcano]].

* In one of the ''weirder'' episode of ''DrakeAndJosh'', Josh and his girlfriend compete by building functional death rays. For a high school science fair. It was a ''really'' weird episode, specially since nobody seemed to find this weird or unlikely or frightening, so RuleOfFunny doesn't even apply …

* ''TheCosbyShow'' had one of the Huxtable girls have a model of the solar system for her display and was totally upstaged by her friend's sound controlled machines. The Huxtable girl jealously accuses of her friend of cheating since her father is a engineer, but Cliff coaxes her into admitting that her own exhibit was really lame and her friend deserved to win.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
* A lot of the action in ''Disney/MeetTheRobinsons'' revolves around the results of a science fair, which has the obligatory volcano. And a few more interesting projects, such as fire ants, musical frogs and a brain scanner.
* The vinegar-baking soda volcano shows up in ''WesternAnimation/ThePiratesInAnAdventureWithScientists'' as part of a professional science competition. It sounds like RuleOfFunny, but [[FridgeBrilliance that would have been quite something]] back in the age of WoodenShipsAndIronMen.

* The second ''CaptainUnderpants'' Book.
* In the BabysittersClub book ''Jessi's Babysitter'', the babysitters get involved in assisting with the elementary school science fair. Represented among the entries are the classic solar system model and volcano. Other clients do such projects as "Barbie on the moon" and the effect of music on plant growth.

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

[[folder: Newspaper Comics ]]

* In ''ComicStrip/BloomCounty'', Oliver causes a panic in a science fair when he constructs a working nuclear weapon, scraping several thousand fluorescent wristwatches for the radioactive material.
-->Actually a case of art imitating life: Someone once panicked their community by trying for a nuclear weapon scout merit badge, scraping several thousand fire alarms for the radioactive material.
* In ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'', Lucy uses Linus and his blanket for her science project, and wins a ribbon for it.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'' has the remains of an old science fair in the old abandoned Aperture Science labs. In its saner days Aperture Labs apparently sponsored science competitions for its employees' children as part of Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. The experiments on display are actually a Foreshadowing for stuff you encounter later in the game.
** All but one of the experiments is a potato battery. The remaining one is, naturally, a baking soda volcano. Wheatley, somewhat creepily, suggests that this was probably the child of working-class parents.
*** One of the projects is also signed as made by "Chell", which incidentally is the name of [[HeroicMime the main character]].

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* On one episode of ''Series/MonstersVsAliens'', Sqweep makes the obligatory volcano for his Earth study class. However, he built it ''full scale'', which resulted in the entire base being covered in foam.

* When SelfDemonstrating/LexLuthor was a kid, he tried to enter a fission-powered toaster into a science fair, but was rejected. He got his revenge by [[AndThatsTerrible stealing forty cakes]] [[AscendedMeme from a nearby bake sale]].

* ''TheSecretWorldOfAlexMack'' had a science fair that wasn't sponsored by a school, but by the Paradise Valley Chemical Plant. Alex's older sister Annie entered a very impressive project resembling a laser, however Alex witnessed another competitor attempting to sabotage it by dropping it on the ground. Alex used her telekinetic powers to save it, but got in trouble when the plant's GC-161 alarms went off, potentially incriminating her.

* In ''BloomCounty'', Oliver causes a panic in a science fair when he constructs a working nuclear weapon, scraping several thousand fluorescent wristwatches for the radioactive material.

* In ''{{Peanuts}}'', Lucy uses Linus and his blanket for her science project, and wins a ribbon for it.

* One episode of ''TheRedGreenShow'' has Red insisting on "helping" with Harold's entry in the local fair. The show being what it is, (what's left of) Red and Harold stagger back into the Possum Lodge and report it all ended with multiple explosions and the first-prize trophy embedded in [[TheGhost Stinky Peterson's]] body. The girl who actually won had a fire extinguisher exhibit.

* AtomicRobo is called upon to judge one in the 2011 Free Comic Book Day issue. Both the solar system and a volcano are in evidence. [[spoiler:Dr. Dinosaur wants to steal something else entirely.]]

Because YouSuck, plots related to science fairs will often (though certainly not always) be based around the BookDumb hero getting the project done at the last minute. Another option is the hero getting one of his/her parents to "help" on the project and then having the project get commandeered by the parent. The TeenGenius is likely to strive to create a wonder that will turn science on its head (but will still lose to the [[CrackDefeat kid with the volcano]], possibly thanks to a DisastrousDemonstration that soaks, singes, or humiliates the principal and/or event judges).

* One of pop-science humour writer Judith Stone's essays, collected in ''How to Tell a Proton From a Crouton'', is about science fairs. At one point she tells a story about a little girl whose volcano didn't work, and was humiliated, and swore that one day [[ThatLittleGirlWasMe she'd have a job making fun of science]].

* An episode of ''BobAndGeorge'', in which Dr. Cossack's daughter builds a self-aware robot and actually ends up losing to a papier-mâché volcano! She lived in the Soviet Union, and since they couldn't use the usual method of consulting the preserved head of JosefStalin (Dr. Wily stole it), they gave it to the other guy because they thought a boy winning would be better for the country.

* Tesla High in ''{{Eureka}}'' has quite possibly the coolest (and [[SeriousBusiness most competitive]]) science fair in television. It helps that the kids' parents are all hotshot scientists at an uber-secret government facility; past experience with it has taught Deputy Jo Lupo to attend in full SWAT gear.

* An episode of ''TinyToonAdventures'', "Buster's Guide to Goofing Off", was focused entirely on Buster waiting until the last minute to build a model volcano for the school science fair. Typical in every way possible, and on purpose.
* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'' in which Connie's cousin from Los Angeles, amazingly enough, managed to persuade Bobby to build a crystal meth lab for their science project. She told him it was a "candy machine". Seriously. Bobby must not watch {{MTV}} '''or''' ''LawAndOrder''.
* Multiple times on ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', although they've only based a whole episode around it once. In that one, Lisa does a project on humiliating Bart after he destroyed her original project, a giant steroid-grown tomato intended to cure world hunger. Science fairs were also mentioned at least in passing in Lisa's segment of the RashomonStyle episode, where she had a grammar-correcting robot, and the "Treehouse of Horror" episode where she created a miniature civilization.
* In ''[[WesternAnimation/SamAndMaxFreelancePolice The Adventures Of Sam And Max Freelance Police]]'', the titular characters meet The Geek at a science fair. Her project is a black hole. That's right — a black hole.

* ''WesternAnimation/SuperMarioWorld'' has a science fair where Hip and Hop build a volcano while Oogtar and Yoshi cross a rutabaga with an eggplant. Hip and Hop sneak a Piranha Plant in the "eggabega" which [[MakeMyMonsterGrow grows to gigantic proportions]] when a jealous Oogtar inadvertently feeds it fertilizer. Things take a [[FromBadToWorse turn for the worse]] when Koopa accidentally causes Hop to release huge amounts of lava through the volcano, forcing everyone to rush out of the school before it gets destroyed.

* An episode of ''AllGrownUp'' uses the "parent taking control of the project" scenario. Tommy got help from Stu, his dad, on building an automatic sock sorter, but was disqualified after people found out that Stu had done the bulk of the construction after turning the project into something else entirely.

* The twin sisters of ''JohnnyTest'' win their school's science fairs every time. If the show wants them to find a science fair challenging, they'll be competing against adults, not classmates.
* In a subversion, Velma on ''WhatsNewScoobyDoo'' was shown bringing a project with which she'd ''already'' won a big science contest to NASA, so its experiment can be carried out in orbit. No, it ''wasn't'' a volcano; it's to study how earthworms move about in zero-g.
* The volcano part was [[ExaggeratedTrope exaggerated]] in one episode of ''{{Chaotic}}'', where ''every project but [[TheSmartGuy Kaz]]'s'' was a volcano.
* The 1980s version of ''TheLittleRascals'' had an episode titled "Science Fair and Foul", in which Buckwheat built a voice-activated TVHeadRobot to compete with Waldo's ice cream machine.

* In ''JimmyNeutron'', Cindy sues Jimmy and gets him banned from the science fair because his genius makes him win every time. He shows up anyway and gets a Nobel Prize from an invention he didn't get to send in, which almost kills his dad, the principal and the Nobel Prize guy. And Sheen had a very hungry lizard.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "Cold Warriors", a young Fry entered a science contest to send experiments to the space station. His was to infect a hamster with the common cold and see if being in space cures it. When there's a cold epidemic in the future, the crew goes to find the station to find a specimen of the cold virus to cure it. The specimen came from [[spoiler:another expermient, with Fry realizing that his experiment wouldn't have worked anyway.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/ElTigre'' episode "The Cuervo Project", Manny, Frida are assigned science-fair partners to Zoe Aves, AKA, Black Cuervo. They decide to build a model of the Miracle City volcano, which Zoe ends up doing all the work on because Manny and Frida are trying to figure out whether or not she's Black Cuervo. Then it transpires that ''every student in school'' had the same idea. Zoe's volcano wins first prize by being bigger than the others, Manny gets an award for participation, and Frida gets a notice of suspension.

[[folder:Film]]

* A lot of the action in ''MeetTheRobinsons'' revolves around the results of a science fair, which has the obligatory volcano. And a few more interesting projects, such as fire ants, musical frogs and a brain scanner.

* In ''OsmosisJones'', Frank once made himself ill by eating shellfish that a kid's science fair project had allegedly, but not really, rendered safe for human consumption.
* The vinegar-baking soda volcano shows up in ''WesternAnimation/ThePiratesInAnAdventureWithScientists'' as part of a professional science competition. It sounds like RuleOfFunny, but [[FridgeBrilliance that would have been quite something]] back in the age of WoodenShipsAndIronMen.

Because YouSuck, plots related to science fairs will often (though certainly not always) be based around the BookDumb hero getting the project done at the last minute. Another option is the hero getting one of his/her parents to "help" on the project and then having the project get commandeered by the parent. The TeenGenius is likely to strive to create a wonder that will turn science on its head (but will still lose to the [[CrackDefeat kid with the volcano]]).

* ''WesternAnimation/Doug'' has an episode where the titular character builds a volcano for a science fair project. A rumor then spreads that his volcano caused the science room to explode, forcing Doug to hide from the police under an alias, Jack Bandit.

* ''TheNewAdventuresOfBeansBaxter'': In "Beans' Under the Weather", Scooter invents weather-making machine for a science fair, and UGLI attempts to use it for their own ends.

* The vinegar-baking soda volcano shows up in ''WesternAnimation/ThePiratesInAnAdventureWithScientists'' as part of a professional science competition.

* The ''StrangersWithCandy'' movie is centered on a science fair. SeriousBusiness for everyone involved.

* In ''{{Juno}}'', a vague reference to this trope is the best Mark can do at articulating why he wants to be an adoptive dad.

* In ''TheManhattanProject'', Paul says he's going to submit a project about raising a generation of hamsters in the dark to see if it improves their hearing. It's just a cover story for the real project—his atomic bomb. It's at the "45th National Science Fair" where Dr. Mathewson and TheGovernment catch up to him.