700 Science Entries Vie for Honors : Education: Projects ranging from cooling the heat of chili peppers to family personality differences compete for awards. Winners will be named today.
Nicholas Guzman’s idea for his science project began as a burning sensation.
“When I was eating chili peppers,” the 17-year-old Fillmore High School student said, “it got too hot.”
After he grabbed the nearest drink he could find to cool his mouth, Nicholas began to wonder which beverages work best to provide relief to people who like their food hot.
He decided to investigate.
The resulting science project, titled “Red Hot Chili Peppers,” is one of 700 entries in the 1994 Ventura County Science Fair being held this week at the County Fairgrounds in Ventura.
Students in the sixth through eighth grades from private and public schools throughout the county entered projects in categories ranging from psychology to chemistry to math.
And Wednesday, 80 local scientists, teachers and other professionals spent hours evaluating the entries and interviewing students to select the fair’s winners, who will be announced today.
In addition to looking for originality among the science projects, judges said they also rate projects according to how well students frame the question they are trying to answer and what experimental techniques they follow.
“Mostly we look for how well the scientific method is applied,” said judge Raquel Izumi, a research associate at Amgen in Thousand Oaks.
For Nicholas’ project on chili peppers, he conducted taste tests on 20 family members, friends and acquaintances.
After blindfolding each of his subjects, Nicholas fed them a type of hot chili pepper called chile de arbole and, after each pepper, had the subjects drink sodas, juice, milk and other liquids. The subjects told Nicholas how well each drink worked on cooling their burning mouths.
Nicholas said he ran into some problems. For instance, he had to use only Latino subjects because, he said, he couldn’t find any Anglos who agreed to eat the chili peppers.
But the experiment’s results were clear: The best beverage to drink after chomping on a hot pepper is milk.
And the worst?
“Hot tea,” Nicholas said. “It burns your mouth more.”
Like Nicholas’ project, many entries at this year’s science fair attempted to find solutions to real-life problems. And some judges said one of their main criteria was for projects to have practical value.
Encouraging students to focus on science projects with a practical application helps prepare them for the world of work, judge Danny Clark said.
“When you’re actually working, you have to have some real-life application or you’re not going to get paid,” said Clark, an electronics engineer at the Port Hueneme Naval Surface Warfare Center. “You can’t just divide numbers for the fun of it.”
As an example of a project with practical value, some judges cited a psychology experiment--titled “Are Personalities Hereditary?”--by Thousand Oaks student Rachel Garfield.
A sophomore at private La Reina High School, Rachel said she got the idea for her project after an argument with her mother.
“I’d just been in a fight with my mother and I wanted to know why we couldn’t get along,” the 15-year-old said.
Assuming that she and her mother fought because they are different, Rachel tested this hunch by taking a psychological personality test she had at her home and then giving the same test to her mother.
To her surprise, it showed that she and her mother both had the same personality types.
Then Rachel began to wonder whether personality was hereditary. So she gave the same psychological test to the parents and children in 26 families--half of whom had adopted children.
Her results showed that biological children nearly always have personalities similar to one of their parents, while adopted children only rarely have temperaments like their mothers and fathers.
Rachel said the results have helped her get along better with her mother. “I’ve learned since we’re both extroverts, I really need to listen to her rather than just go on my own.”
Besides looking for projects that exhibit originality, practicality and the use of rigorous scientific methods, judges have another crucial factor to evaluate: whether students did the projects themselves or with their parents’ help.
At one point Wednesday, a group of judges evaluating computer projects gathered to admire a project by a Camarillo sixth-grader who used a computer program to measure the effect of air pollution on temperature and light.
“For a sixth-grader, it’s outstanding,” judge Emerald Jones said. “I wonder if papa did it.”
Although parents are allowed to advise their children on the projects, students must do all of the work themselves, judges said.
The sixth-grader who did the air-pollution project later described his project in depth to a judge, dispelling doubts on whether the entry was his own work.
But judges said they are careful to grill each student about their projects, such as asking the children to describe the computer programs they used to compile data.
“Most of us know enough about computers to know if mom and dad have had too much of a hand in it,” judge Trish Zakas said.
FYI
The Ventura County Science Fair will be open to the public today from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Featuring projects from students throughout the county, the fair is located in both the Commercial Building and the Gem and Mineral Building at the Ventura County Fairgrounds in Ventura. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony at 6:30 tonight in the Agricultural Building at the fairgrounds. For information, call the Ventura County superintendent of schools office at 388-4414.
