Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Science fair, part I

I mentioned last week that G and I had judged a sixth grade science fair. We were chosen because G's former boss's wife (the wife of his former boss, not his boss's former wife) is a teacher and was looking for judges. And yes, "chosen" is the correct word - it's a very prestigious honor.

Science fair projects were mandatory for all sixth graders at this school, which means that some of them appeared to have been thrown together the morning they were due. Literally. There were a couple that didn't appear to have been written in English.

Since G and I were so entertained by the projects we judged, I thought you might be, too. Here is a sampling:
  • One student's project consisted of holding a dog treat in each hand and seeing which hand her dog went to first.
  • Another project involved magnets and cars (this one was almost indecipherable), and the conclusion drawn was "For cars on land, use magnet to steel bar, but for cars in air, use magnet to magnet."
  • In a project that consisted of watering plants with orange juice, coke, or coffee (I can't remember which worked the best, but all the plants were looking rough by the end of the experiment), the student included a real-world application: This is good for the Earth because people can use orange juice, coke, or coffee instead of water.
These kids are just so darn cute. Our favorite projects were the ones with pictures of the students on the displays. We wanted to give them extra points just for that. Luckily the winner (whose dad is an engineer and who did an excellent project on the effectiveness of different types of insulation) included a picture of himself at a tire recycling place (recycled rubber was one of the insulations he tested). He was standing atop a pile of old tires, flexing a bicep in the classic "king of the hill" pose. Keep in mind that he's a sixth grader - a scrawny eleven year old. Just precious.

I judged a middle school science fair this morning, so stay tuned for more good stuff.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

One more classic to add....A project looked at the time necessary to grow a salt crystal.
According to the student, a real life application of this research is that it helps us understand how babies form.

Another built a homemade lie detector, which didn't work by the way. In the experiment, subjects were asked questions....very personal questions. The student's project prominetly displayed listed questions and responses to the subjects' sexual histories. White-out was eventually used to censor the project.

-G