Junior Scientists Put Projects on Display

“Deep Bass,” “Are Our Personalities Pre-Destined by the Planets?” and an experiment that tested the durability of different brands of paper towels were just three of the 150 science fair projects on display this week at San Fernando High School.

It was the second annual science fair sponsored by Litton Guidance and Control Systems, which adopted San Fernando High School about four years ago, said Eric Goldner, an engineering specialist at Litton.

Litton helped students develop projects using a wide range of classroom skills, Goldner said.

Litton got involved with the fair, Goldner said, “because some of us were lamenting the lack of quality students coming out of schools these days. We thought, well, ‘We’re scientists and we do projects and things every day, maybe we can teach kids something.’

“So we proposed helping a school put on a science fair,” he said. “We worked with some of the students, teaching them project plan writing, data analyses, giving lectures.”

What resulted were projects like that of Wilson Gomez, 18, and Danny Santana, 17, titled “Deep Bass,” which drew a crowd.

“Our goal was to figure out how to custom-make stereo speaker enclosures that sound really good,” said Gomez, who touched a knob on a sound mixer and produced a crescendo of pulsing dance music from a pair of speakers.

Using equations to determine the optimal level of “resonance magnification” and the “compliance” or stiffness of the speaker’s suspension in an enclosure, Gomez and Santana proved that “you don’t need a big box to get big volume.”

Across the aisle, Danny Morales, 16, and Eliu Gutierrez, 15, conducted an experiment with paper towels.

“We do two main tests,” said Danny. “One for absorbency and one for strength.” They created a pie chart showing the percentage of different brands of paper towels purchased by a control group of consumers. Another graph illustrated absorbency rates.

In the end, Brawny was the big winner. “It was pretty obvious, actually,” Morales said. “Of those we tested, it’s the most expensive. And it has those little ‘thirst pockets.’ ”

In the cafeteria, Stephanie Maldonado, 18, explained her experiment, which tested the accuracy of astrological forecasts.

“We concluded that the personality characteristic traits were indeed determined by the planets,” Maldonado said. She and a partner conducted surveys of students, comparing their personality traits to the characteristics forecast by astrologers.

“Plato wrote about astrology, you know,” Maldonado said.