Local students show off science skills at school fairs

A ten-foot rocket, several solar cookers, a hover craft and a replica of a house could all be found in the Somers Middle School gymnasium last week as local students competed in the school level science fairs.

Winners from fourth grade, sixth grade and eighth grade fairs will compete at the county level this week at West Valley Middle School in Kalispell. The March 12 fair will be from 9 a.m. to noon.

Eighth-grade teacher Jenny Schon finds there's an amount of surprise and pride as a teacher to see what students come up with.

Like Elijah Katchur's 10-foot rocket that required a Flathead County Sheriff's Department officer to be present when it was set off.

Or applicable projects like Levi Woodring's study on the influence of cell phones on driving and Andrea Love's look at how best to insulate a house.

For students who are often told what they'll be learning about, it's a nice break for them to get creative and delve into something they enjoy, the teachers said.

"It gets them thinking about it," Schon said. "They get to narrow in on something they enjoy and let their creativity come out."

Ross Van Luven got the idea for his project from an episode of the TV show "Suite Life of Zack and Cody" this summer. He decided to build a 10-inch Tesla coil, a resonant transformer circuit, and test how many florescent bulbs it could light and from what distances. It could light 10 from about 30 inches away.

Jenna Wilke's inspiration came from outside the country. A trip to Egypt made her take a closer look at solar cookers for her project titled "Oh Mr. Sun." She tested what shapes and materials would cook the best, and it was her parabolic-shaped cooker with aluminum foil covered Styrofoam that did the best. It reached 250 degrees in 30 minutes. Wilke is one of ten finalists from the eighth grade who will compete at the county level.

Also joining her will be Woodring, who had subjects drive a 2-mile video game test course with a wheel and pedals to test the influence of talking on a cell phone or texting while driving.

"Everyone knows it impacts driving," Woodring said. "I wanted to center around how much it impacts."

What he found was that talking on a cell phone increased poor driving, which included crashes, getting off the track, inattentiveness, unnoticed acceleration or slowing down among other factors, by 37 percent over normal driving. Texting increased poor driving by 194 percent. Woodring acknowledges the limitations of his project – that it's a video game and he tested it on his peers, none of whom have driver's licenses – but says it still points out the dangers.

He was most surprised that once his subjects got on the phone, they seemed to level out and not drive as poorly, but the worst part was pulling their phone out to answer it. This caused crashes or extended periods of time where neither hand was on the wheel.

Twelve judges including parents, community members, teachers and board members helped determine the winners of the eighth-grade fair.

In sixth grade, it was the animals that made their mark on the kids. Several students performed experiments using class pets or their pets at home.

Even with the popularity of those kind of biological science projects, three times as many students chose a physical science topic this year, said Ansley Ford, sixth-grade science/history teacher.

"Everything is science – they have the whole world to choose from," Ford said.