All students are winners at Rice Science Fair

February 4, 2009

By Brenda Rader Mross

The Wellington

 

There was something almost carnival-like about the Rice Science Fair on Jan. 27.

Not only did every child at the (Wellington, Colorado) elementary school participate and every project receive a ribbon, but there were prize drawings for science kits and the school lab was open for hands-on family activities.

School officials estimated the Science Fair Family Night attendance to be close to 500 people.

The top three winners — Emma Day, Brandi Hart and Trista Hill — will take their projects to the Poudre School District Science Fair on April 18. Kailee Bosch, Owen Olson and Megan Dudden were chosen as alternates.

Fifth- and sixth-graders presented individual efforts, while fourth-graders did group and partner projects. Kindergarten through third grade worked together on class projects.

“We believe it’s really important our students start doing investigations right from the beginning,” said Rice Principal Karen Koehn. “It’s a learning process. The kids get so excited when they realize how their experiment applies to real life. Science is really all about discovery.”

And good science is all about finding the truth, judges Phil Buxton, Shawn Brann, Gary Raham, Blake Larsen and Wayne Jensen agreed, even if it’s not what the budding scientist theorized. In fact, the winning entry’s hypothesis was incorrect.

“I was very impressed with the kids’ ability,” said Buxton, a biologist.

Brann, assistant fire marshal, commented on the caliber of the 98 entries. “They were wide-ranging and difficult to score.”

Projects were rated using a school-provided rubric as a guide. Students were awarded one to four points based on criteria in nine different categories: question or problem, research, hypothesis, procedure/materials, experimental design (variables), results/observations/data, conclusions, originality and creativity of the scientific idea, and on the display itself.

Gary Raham, natural science writer and owner of Biostration, suggested next year’s panel also take into consideration the project’s inherent level of difficulty.

“How challenging was it?” Raham asked. “What was the level of critical thinking required? Did they learn how to do it and were they able to put what they learned into practice?”

Larsen owns Larsen Structural Design, and Jensen is co-owner of Wellington Veterinary Clinic. Rice literacy teacher Shelly Butcher also judged the projects.

“We thought it was important to have real scientists judging our science fair,” Butcher said.

Koehn and the “science guys” interviewed the finalists to ensure the project was indeed the submitter’s work.

With evaluations begining at 9 a.m. and continuing until 2:30 p.m., the five community members earned their school lunch treat. “I thought it would take three hours tops; that we’d be done by noon,” said Brann.

Nevertheless, the reviewers concurred they’d love to be invited back next year based on what they saw this year. They cited a couple of notable entries as being particularly original or interesting: potty training a hamster and the “smiling one,” wherein the student scientist discovered that when smiled at first, 62 percent of the fifth- and sixth-grade people tested smiled back.

Larsen said there were multiple factors that made Emma Day’s “What coat should I wear?” project tops.

“It was an interesting experiment,” he said. “It was an original idea and it was well presented.”

Emma conjectured that wearing a down coat would provide the most warmth, but she discovered that wool would keep its wearer warmer. To test her theory, Emma heated water bottles to 99 degrees and placed them in separate brown paper bags insulated with wool, cotton, polyester and down feathers. Then she put the bags in the freezer, continually checking temperatures.

“Polyester was the worst,” she said, “and cotton was better than down feathers.”

The 12-year-old sixth-grader said it felt exciting to win.

“There were lots of projects,” said Emma, who won a second place ribbon last year. “I can’t believe mine was one of the best.”

Fellow sixth-grader Brandi Hart was an alternate last year who ended up going to the district fair because “there was an extra spot.”

The 11-year-old’s “How does different types of music physiologically affect preteens?” caught the judges’ attention with its “nicely done” presentation, although “do” would have been grammatically accurate. Brandi had four subjects, ages 10 to 12, listen to three genres of music. She measured their baseline vital signs — blood pressure, heart rate and respiratory rate — before and after 30-minute musical intervals.

“I was correct,” Brandi said. “Different types of music do affect people.”

She chose rock ‘n’ roll classic artists Queen, country star Chris LeDoux and the instrumental sounds of Windham Hill.

“It was pretty fun,” Brandi said. “I feel good. I’m excited just to go (to the district fair).”

Raham thought Trista Hill’s “Does the temperature of an onion affect how much our eyes water when cutting it?” did a good job of explaining her procedures, and he liked how it applied to everyday use.

The fifth-grader was surprised to win.

“All of these projects were good. I thought mine was, too,” Trista said. “I thought some asked better questions, but I still believed in myself.”

Trista guessed she wouldn’t cry while cutting a white onion after chilling it, and counted her own teardrops as her gauge.

“The only thing I didn’t like is how onions sting my eyes,” the 11-year-old said. “Well, that and the risk of losing one-tenth of my fingers by using the sharpest knife in our house.”

Trista said her parents supervised while she sliced. She said she chose her idea after conducting a web search for food-related experiments because she loves to cook and hates that onions always make her mother cry.

“That makes me sad,” she said.

Surfing “science fair project” turned up 45,800,000 hits, indicating the “fare” out there is abundant. Even more exciting are the virtually unlimited original ideas yet to be discovered in the minds of future scientists, like those preparing for the Eyestone Elementary School Science Fair on March 25.