Displaying Expertise: Science Fair Collections and Adolescent Scientific Communities in the United States, 1928-1957

• In Event: Collecting as a Hobby

Abstract

This paper traces the formation and evolution of student hobbyist collecting practices for science fair displays, focusing on the ways American adolescents established communities of practice by sharing their collections through competitions. Over the course of the twentieth century, generations of American children conducted their first experiments by crafting science fair projects. From fossils to fauna, hobbyists carefully crafted the arrangement their collections to be judged by peers and adults alike. This paper argues that the creation of such public displays were central to shaping an adolescent scientific culture in the United States during the early to mid twentieth century. The research is grounded in a source base that includes photographs of science fair displays, project descriptions written by students, popular magazines, and archival collections of sponsoring organizations. For STS scholars, adolescent collections also raise important philosophical questions regarding the epistemology of children’s experimentation. From vibrant three-dimensional dioramas of the Progressive era to postwar argument-driven text panels, these displays reveal students’ changing beliefs about what counted as faithful scientific evidence. In the process, it demonstrates how science fair collections provide an entry point for how adolescents conceived of science on material, social, and epistemological terms over the course of the twentieth century.

Authors

• Sarah Scripps, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

• Allison Marsh