I can tell you why I didnt enter personally: I don't live by any grocery stores.  I go shopping like once a month lol. So maybe people are too lazy/ busy / don't feel like going to the store to buy marshmellows? Thats just a guess.

Another obvious problem is the lack of serious STEM users. THere's not really a whole lot of people posting Science, Tech, Math and/or Engineering posts on the STEM front end. This is probably the biggest problem.

STEM has great distribution numbers and curation. but if there's barely any users being rewarded for quality posts: Good luck launching competitions like this. Somehow "we" need to find more GEEKS.

Obiously buying marshmellows and pasta isnt difficult for most people. However, it is something people need to remember to do vs. just entering that day. Maybe do some type of math contest next? Have a couple equations to balance? See if people remember PEMDAS?

Anyways ill try REALLY hard to enter the next competition and also get some of my friends to enter.

I'd like to see some experiments, preferably setting fire to stuff or blowing something up.

Perhaps a longer time period for the contest, then you run into the problem of people loosing the post. the countdown times add a little bit of viability to a post so that might be of use to alert people here is a contest. For myself, I like looking at the results, but even if I did want to enter the marshmallow challenge I would have had to go to the store and hope they had a bag of marshmallows and some spaghetti. (not products I typically keep, and I usually only shop once or twice a week). 

Maybe point the post toward people with kids of school age, I know there are a lot of people with kids. I am rather surprised that people with kids did not get their kids involved with the marshmallow contest, it seemed like it would be a great thing for families, perhaps they just did not have the stuff handy.

Also reach out to some of the communities that might have a larger child population, like <a href="https://peakd.com/c/hive-114105/created">Powerhouse Creative</a> or the creativecoin, or the <a href="https://peakd.com/c/hive-199420/created">Home education</a> communities. the homesteaders community may also be of help when trying to find participants. Some of them are small communities, but they do have some pretty dedicated users and are always trying to find fun ways to educate their children.

Dear Bog, if I'd seen the Marshmallow Challenge when it was a thing, I'd be all over it. In fact, Ima do it regardless. My son is visiting this weekend, and he's got some sort of degree in engineering from some sort of college he went to that I'm still paying for, so he's got to earn his dinner. 

Lack of promotion and incentives for joining the contest.

Bashadow gave me a heads up on this. We might be able to help out getting attention towards experiments, particularly if aimed at primary aged children. I do see quite a few experiments being show cased in the homeschooling tag and I suspect some of the parents wouldn't mind getting some more ideas. 

If I'm entirety honest, there are two types of people who respond to community challenges. Those who are passionate about the community and those who are drawn by the hope of good rewards and support (and I'm sorry to say that it's hive rewards above the tokens).

It looks like you're competing for attention with stemsocial as well. 

@minismallholding

I always dream of participating in something that is innovative! For example, wear ecology clothing, something that helps the planet! Create things with recyclable material!👀