Young Minds Want to Know

Swati Yanamadala, an eighth-grader from Palos Verdes, stood by her science fair project looking sharp in a black suit with a pink shirt, stud earrings and lip gloss.

The 13-year-old sounded even sharper as she discussed her research on the Ballona Wetlands. Her work earned her one of the top two prizes in the Los Angeles County Science Fair on Thursday.

“I was trying to study the various factors that affect fecal contamination in wetlands,” the diminutive Swati, who attends the Chadwick School, said with a big smile covered with braces.

Swati won first place in the junior high school division of the 54th annual science fair. She also earned $250 and round-trip tickets to any destination served by Southwest Airlines.

The fair at the Los Angeles Convention Center featured more than 1,000 projects from a record 167 schools.

The event is open to sixth- through 12-graders who have already won on their campuses. Students compete in 40 categories, including pharmacology, physics and ecology, with an overall winner each for junior and senior high school group. The top three winners in each category compete in the state science fair, held in May.

“Kids who participate in science fairs want to have the opportunity to take what they’ve learned in the classroom and apply it to a real problem,” said Dean Gilbert, the fair’s director and a science consultant for the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

Swati was motivated by concerns about ocean contamination by people. For four days she awoke by 3 a.m. to have her mother drive her an hour to five water collection stations in the wetlands. She stayed until 6 p.m. measuring levels of such bacteria as E. coli and enterococci. She worked out of a lab at Loyola Marymount University.

“I think it would help to know what role the Ballona Wetlands play in our coastal ecosystem,” she said.

Ninth-grader Geoffrey Woo of Palos Verdes Peninsula High School won in the senior division, receiving $500 and airplane tickets for his project titled “The Effects of Piezoelectric Ultrasound on the Transfer of Molecules Across Membranes.”

His project, the 15-year-old explained, might be adapted to use ultrasound to drive medicine into plant and human cells, eliminating the need for needles or pills.

“I was intrigued by the topic,” said Geoffrey, who read about the idea in a science journal and was allowed to use equipment at a UCLA physics lab. He said he worked on the project for five months.

Among the competitors was Michael Willis, 13, an eighth-grader from Columbus Middle School in Canoga Park. He conducted a sugar substitute taste test after the Los Angeles Unified School District decided to remove sugary snacks from schools.

“Since they didn’t ask the kids which sweeteners they liked, I decided to find out,” Michael said. He said students liked sucralose, sold under the brand name Splenda, best.

Robert McRae, 12, from St. Paul the Apostle School in Westwood, said he saw a hovercraft at the fair two years ago, but it didn’t work. With help from his father, who rebuilds vintage cars as a hobby, Robert worked more than two months to make a working hovercraft from a round raft, a leaf blower and a fan from his family’s garage. He wears a helmet when he rides, gliding about an inch or so above the ground.

“It’s great to be here,” said Robert, who won third place in the junior engineering division. “I hope this will encourage people to build stuff.”

Visitors could hear the hip-hop sounds of Maddie Schwarz’s tap dance board echo through the enormous exhibition space. Along with her tap instructor, Maddie, 13, of the Viewpoint School in Calabasas, built a board that played drum sounds and flashed lights in time to her dancing. Maddie, who won second place in junior engineering, said she wanted to help people like her grandfather, who is deaf in one ear, enjoy tap performances more.

Lauren Shenfeld, 14, of Nobel Middle School in Northridge conducted a physics experiment that determined she could spin faster when doing ballet pirouettes if her arms were closer to her body. Lauren, an eighth-grader whose project won an honorable mention, designed her display like a stage, with spotlights made from tiny flashlights, velvet drapes and little dancers cut out of foam boards.

“Dance is my passion,” said Lauren, who has studied ballet for seven years. “Pirouettes aren’t my strongest thing in dance, so studying the physics behind them will help me work on them.”

Katrina Que, 13, and teammate April Wang, 14, from Nativity School in Torrance won an honorable mention even though they had to work with uncooperative octopuses for research on whether size affects the creatures’ speed.

“One hates me,” Katrina said. “It squirted water in my face.”

The eighth-graders raced three octopuses through a maze they built in a clear plastic bin. At first, the octopuses climbed over the maze walls or pulled them over with their powerful suckers. The girls made higher walls and used stronger glue.

It turned out that size didn’t matter, but gender did. Fred, the only female, was the fastest. One male, Bob, suffered competitive stress.

“He gnawed off one of his tentacles,” April said.