Wendy Cook - NORTH COUNTY STAFF | Posted: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 11:00 pm
Young scientists from throughout Central Utah came together to compete for the chance to go to Nationals and International competitions at the recent Science and Engineering Fair at BYU's Regionals.
Darren Hodges, a BYU faculty member and member of the Science Fair Committee, explained the process of competition for students, grade five through 12.
"The idea is seeing the kids excited and hopefully they stick with it. For example, in the junior high and high school levels of the Fair, if they win they can go to the international science fair in Atlanta, Ga., and they can win prizes, several hundred to thousands of dollars to specialty awards from companies like Kodak, Intel, Micron and Symantec," he said.
"Other organizations also are there to see the projects and give out awards like each branch of the military and several Universities like CEU and BYU. All 10 science and engineering departments at BYU give out scholarships. This year, CEU has offered a scholarship of $1,800 to one student at each grade level in the competition.
Lisa Clarke, the organizer of the fair at BYU, said the competition is valuable, even if the students don't advance in the competition this year.
"These prizes are real and significant. We have sent many students from this fair to participate in Washington D.C. and to Internationals, but if you don't give it a chance you won't get a shot at all the possibilities either," Clarke said "It's worth working for in years to come, even if you don't place or go to Washington D.C. this year."
Students who participated in the fair were happy with the competition.
North Ridge Elementary's, Catherine Ritchie, whose science experiment was to see how much sugar in water would allow the same buoyancy as salt, said, "It kind of makes me nervous but it's really exciting to know that I'm at a high level of competition, for doing my project."
Dallin Visnaw at Windsor Elementary agreed, "To compete at this level feels real exciting and I hope I win!"
Student Austin Heath at Cedar Ridge, a first place winner category of Earth Science said, "My experiment was on the effects of salt de-icers on concrete. My hypothesize was that rock salt would do the most damage, but I found out that ice by itself does the most damage to the concrete and the rock salt did the second most damage. The best product that did the least damage had calcium chloride in them like the brand Road Runner Ice Melt. For me to compete at this level feels awesome to know that my science experiment was a success and I could come to the BYU Science Fair."
Marissa Navarrete and Amber Rymer teamed up to research the correlation between conversation and comprehension.
Navarrete said, "It's amazing and exciting because we haven't ever got this far. In order to come we had to research our project, spend a lot of time on it and win two other contests, the school level and the district level, just to get this far."
Rymer added, "From this we learned a lot about being a teacher and how conversation and comprehension works."
Navarette's mother, Carol, stated, "The kids are so excited just to miss a day of school, but the experience that they have here is so worth it."
Grand Champion, Joshua Seaman who researched, "Up in Smoke, How Much Energy Burns Off in Different Foods," said, "It was really cool. I liked it a lot because I kind of like fire and it was fun to work with my dad to find out how much energy, or calories, were expended when used in different types of food. All the judges liked all of my research and data on the board. I think it will be really cool to go to Washington D.C. because I've always wanted to go."
Local winners and participants were as follows:
Local winners of Grand Awards for grades 7-12 were as follows:
Junior Division Grand Champion: Ryan Alvord, Oak Canyon Jr. High, for Smoke Detection.
UVU one year full tuition scholarship: Allison Bigelow, Pleasant Grove High School, for Comparing Tensile Strength of 3 surgical incisions.
Winners of Grand Awards for grades 5-6:
Elementary Grand Champions in Engineering and Computer Science were Kristine Rosquist and Lara Lagerstedt of Lincoln Academy for "Darn Them Gussets."
Middle school program nominee Adam Cook, Central Elementary.