Our school has stressed science fair involvement for many years. I have gotten by the science fair requirement by giving them an option of science fair or another contest. Even if they do a contest, they have to have some sort of display for science fair on what they did. Watching Earth Change and the Duracell competition are the two options I give my students for their second quarter project. I point out the differences between pure science and engineering when I assign the project.
Students can see the wide variety of activities that make up science.
I hope students will also see how creativity is important to science. Almost all the work is done at home so neither project takes much class time. Yours is one of those contests. I, like Sue, am having students do NSIP on a voluntary and individual basis. My classroom structure is similar to Sue's where I require all of my regular Physics students to do a research paper or project.