“This is an awesome day, and awesome work by our students,” said Seaway District High School principal, Don Lewis, as he joined teachers and members of the community in examining the displays at the annual SDHS Science Fair.
“We brought the grade sixes over to see these science projects,” he said, “because it’s great for kids to get a look at the ideas of others, and for our young Seaway scientists to act as mentors, communicating about their projects with others. We were also pleased that members of the community also came to look at the Science Fair.”
Seaway held its Science Fair in the school gym on Friday, February 27. All of the intermediate students as well as 15 grade nines took part. Judging of the projects was done by teachers, community people and by senior high school science students.
There were three types of projects for the fair entrants: experiments, research and design. “We wanted them to focus on scientific enquiry,” said Seaway science teacher, Melissa Ringler. “We wanted students to ask a question, to work to find the answer, and then to communicate that knowledge to others.”
Senior student judges, Joshua Casselman, Jaime Garlough and Bronwen Fowler, indicated that it was a bit of a tug-of-war, evaluating the junior school projects. “We want them to share information, but we didn’t want to intimidate them. There was quite a range of projects and skills out there, and we made a point of giving constructive criticism as we went along.”
The range of skills and interests on display at the fair was very impressive. Student Grant Wells created a virtual hunter training simulator (V.H.T.S.) which is designed to make a person familiar with different types of game and different firearms. “Kids are getting housebound,” Grant said. “This simulator is meant to get them outside, working with animals and the environment, becoming better and safer hunters.”
Gabriel Baker and Alex Stewart, who both say they really like science, examined the properties of bleach on organic and non-organic materials, while Maiah Horne’s work, Rust Never Sleeps, studied the problems of rust in automobile steel.
Abigail Jordan studied the relationship between density, colour and nutritional values in selected fruits and vegetables in Eat A Rainbow Every Day. Aaron Tibben explored ways to clean even the dirtiest water, without the use of costly chemicals, by building a long filter that incorporates the earth’s natural filtering properties. “This is important for third world countries,” he said.
Other projects looked at tsumanis, oil versus wind energy, the effect of different liquids on diffusion, the electrolyte challenge and the nature and uses of uranium.
Science fair winners will move on to a board-wide competition.
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