Students win awards at science fair

Columbia Falls High School students received several awards at the 31st annual Montana Tech Regional Science and Engineering Fair last month.

Overall, the students nabbed first place in the small school award. Competing at the fair were Erin Quintia’s independent science research students: Amanda Bevan, Derik Butts, Annabel Conger, Emily Getts, Gabrielle Merrell, Anna Nicosia and Colin Norick.

Silver medal winners for 11th grade behavioral and social sciences were Colin Norick for “The Correlation of Lexile Level and Reading Comprehension while Multitasking” and Annabel Conger for “The Effects of Negative Campaigning on Young Voters.” Norick also received the American Psychological Association and U.S. Air Force awards.

He expanded on his research from last year, which showed that students reading comprehension dropped when they were texting.

This year he knew high school students are unlikely to stop texting during homework. So, he wanted to find the level at which the reading material plus texting became too hard for the students. One of the things he determined is that textbooks need to be written at a lower reading level to evolve with the new habits of today’s students.

Norick also took first place at the Intermountain Junior Science and Humanities Symposium at Montana Tech for his research. He goes on to nationals in April.

Conger used a recent senate race in North Carolina to test the effect of negative campaign ads on young voters.

She found that students who have a strong party preference were more affected by negative ads, whereas independents weren’t influenced at all. This is opposite of what studies normally show that swing voters are more influenced by negative ads.

Her research did align with other studies that negative ads decrease voter turnout.

Derik Butts received the U.S. Air Force award for his project, “The Effects of Temperature on Teenage Cognitive Performance.”

Butts had to take the ACT test last year in a cold room and didn’t do as well as he would have liked. He decided to test this theory.

He had students do simple cognitive tests in classrooms of varying temperatures, at 52, 72 and 80 degrees. He discovered that the temperatures didn’t influence performance because the tests — the Stroop Color and Word test and a working memory test—weren’t difficult enough.

Gabrielle Merrell received the Navy and NASA Earth System Science awards for her project “Impacts of El Niño on Columbia Falls, and correlations to large fire years in Glacier National Park.”

Merrell was at the Cut Bank Campground with Youth Conservation Corps when the Reynolds Creek Fire started last summer. She said the effects of the fire were “devastating,” making her wonder if there was a way to predict a large fire year.

She found that from 1985 to the present, an El Nino event correlated with more acres burning in Glacier.