Newtown Students Honored At State Science Horizons Fair

By Eliza Hallabeck

A number of Newtown students were recognized for their efforts in the regional level of the Science Horizons science fair, held over the weekend of February 10 at Western Connecticut State University.

St Rose of Lima School seventh grade student Grace Herrick won first place in the junior physical science competition and two Newtown Middle School projects also earned recognition during the science fair. Lydia Field and Caitlin Moss’s project, “The Effect of Soil Type on Earthquake Damage,” earned the girls a week at Space Camp in Alabama and the title of Best Overall in the middle school level of the fair. Conrad Reilly’s project, “Can You Hear Me Now?” earned him a spot as a finalist in the fair.

Knowing she would have to complete a science project this school year, Grace said she started work on her project this past summer.

“I saw a movie, Blue Gold: World Water Wars, about pharmaceuticals in the water supplies so I wanted to do that for my Science Horizons, and that is how I started [my project],” said Grace. “But when I contacted the Environmental Protection Agency they told me that testing for pharmaceuticals is such a new technology that it is $20,000 a sample. So they said something like caffeine would be better to test for.”

Grace said she was granted access to using the lab at KB Analytical, LLC, in Oakdale. She then started thinking about where to find her samples.

“When I was thinking about my sample taking I decided to do Newtown Wastewater treatment plant water, because of domestic use of caffeine. I thought it would probably flow through here,” said Grace, sitting in a conference room of United Water on Commerce Road.

Grace worked with United Water Plant Manager Julio Segarra, who she said helped her gain access to samples of the water.

After obtaining samples, Grace based her findings as compared to Coca-Cola, “because Coca-Cola has caffeine.”

When Grace found no caffeine in her samples, Mr Segarra said he was not surprised. Water and Sewer Authority Chair Richard Zang, who was also present for the meeting with Grace, said he was happily surprised at the lab’s results.

“They did not expect to see such a clean effluent from this plant,” said Mr Zang, “but we have known for a while that we have superior processing here.”

Grace won $200 for her project at the Science Horizons fair.

Mr Segarra said it is nice to see students becoming involved with cleaning the environment.

“It is nice to see an up and coming interest,” said Mr Segarra.

Grace said she has not yet decided on what she will do for her Science Horizons project next year, when she will be an eighth grade student at St Rose.

At Newtown Middle School this week, eighth graders Lydia, Caitlin, and Conrad also reflected on how their projects faired at Science Horizons. All three students completed the Science Horizons projects to satisfy their eighth grade science project requirement.

Lydia and Caitlin said they have known each other since sixth grade, and teamed up to work on their, “The Effect of Soil Type on Earthquake Damage.”

“We thought it was interesting,” said Lydia.

Both girls said they wanted to study the effect of soil type on buildings in an earthquake situation to help people understand why some earthquakes are more impacting than others, especially with the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan in the past couple of years.

To test soil types, Caitlin and Lydia said they simulated buildings, soil types, and an earthquake. The girls tested four types of soil by using replacements for the soil types. Bedrock, for example, was instead Play-Do and instead of sand, the girls used baby powder. Sugar cubes and peanut butter were used to construct the houses on the “shake table,” constructed out of two binder covers, bouncy balls, and rubber bands.

Thanks to their project, Caitlin said, “Now we get to go to Space Camp in Alabama.”

For his project, Conrad wanted to find out whether listening to music loud through earphones effects the frequencies students can hear. To test whether listening to loud music would have an effect on what tones ears could hear, Conrad said he gathered 25 students and questioned them on how loud they listen to their music. Conrad then asked the students to listen to different frequencies and report back what they heard.

“I really didn’t get any conclusive data,” said Conrad.

Conrad made it to the finalist round of Science Horizons.

NMS science teacher Beverly Andracchi said roughly 20 projects were submitted to Science Horizons from NMS this year.