Judges Impressed by Science Fair Entries
Nicole Flynn, 13, was walking down the street wracking her brain for a science project when she noticed a coin on the ground.
Now that’s a good idea, the San Rafael eighth-grader thought. How about an experiment on whether people are more apt to pick up a shiny penny than a dull one?
Nicole never did come up with definitive results. In fact, the sole conclusion she drew was that most Marin County residents don’t bother stooping for pennies.
Flynn, however, did earn an award for her research at a local science fair, resulting in a trip this week to Los Angeles to compete in the 31st annual State Science Fair at the California Museum of Science and Industry.
In all, more than 500 entrants from secondary schools in 22 counties are participating in the contest, which is open to the public through Sunday.
According to veteran judges such as Navy computer scientist Ronald Domb, the 1988 fair entries have proven quite impressive.
“We have a pretty good range of topics and I’ve seen a lot more use of professional questioning and testing methods,” said Domb, who has been a judge for 12 years.
“Nobody makes their own home-made radios anymore,” declared judge Christopher M. Gould, an associate professor of physics at USC.
Indeed, the first-prize award in the senior division, announced late Thursday, went to a project by Fresno 10th-grader Jennifer Ryder that Gould termed “of Ph.D. quality.”
Titled “Rotational Gel Electrophoresis,” the project detailed a process for separating fragments of genes. The runner-up senior award went to Tam Tran of Alhambra High School for synthesizing a new bimetallic compound from two metals. Earning junior division first-prize honors was Jennifer Stahlhut of Huntington Beach, for a project titled “Lymphocytes--The Story of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.”
Many projects dealt with topics more familiar to the layman. “Anything that gets a lot of coverage in the news,” Domb said, “you’ll see a lot of projects on the next year.”
In the physics competition, for example, superconductivity--which deals with the loss of electrical resistance in metals cooled to frigid temperatures--seemed sexy. And in the field of medicine, junior high school projects showed that cigarette smoke can kill spider plants and can wreak havoc with the olfactory senses.
According to Erika Bjork, 12, of Contra Costa County, some smokers have such a poor sense of smell that they confused the scent of bananas with apples, perfume with alcohol and vanilla with chocolate.
Riverside senior Dildar Ahmad also dealt with a newsy topic in his project, “How Many Grams of Poppy Seeds Need to Be Ingested to Give a Positive Drug Test.”
Ahmad, 17, said he fed poppy seeds to his dad 140 times last fall and then conducted urine tests. His conclusion: Eating a mere 1.25 grams of seeds will produce a positive result for opiates.
“This could hurt the guy who ate poppy seeds,” Ahmad said. “Or it could help a drug user (who claims he ate poppy seeds) get out of it.”
The projects, divided into 13 categories ranging from microbiology to behavioral science, provided answers to questions of varying levels of interest.
Jenny Maybee, 12, of Bakersfield, demonstrated that earthworms prefer green onions to celery, spinach, jicama or bean sprouts. “I’m not sure why they would not eat the sprouts,” she told a reporter. “I chopped them up fine.”
And James Tomberlin, 15, of Ventura County, demonstrated that snails can pull more than their own weight. He rigged 31 snails from his back yard to a home-made “snail sled” weighted with pennies.
Speaking of pennies, Flynn said she placed three of varying visibility on a city sidewalk and watched from a distance as 400 people passed by. Only 35 reached down for any of the coins.
“I know they saw them--some people went to the extent of bending halfway down before not picking them up,” Flynn said, laughing. “Some people even kicked the pennies. And one person picked up a penny and threw it back down.”
Then there was the generous 50-year-old woman who reached down for all three coins. “As she walked by me, she said, ‘Here’s three pennies I found,’ and gave them to me.”
