Date: Fri 08-May-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: MICHEL

Quick Words:

St-Rose-Science-Fair

Full Text:

The St Rose Science Fair

(with photos)

BY MICHELE HOGAN

Did you know that boys have cleaner hands than girls?

According to tests on swabs from a group of boys and girls in first and eighth

grades at St Rose, this is so.

Matthew Kelly, sixth grader, explained that fewer colonies of bacteria grew

from swabs taken from boy's hands than from girl's hands. He made a detailed

analysis of his results and entered it in the St Rose School Science Fair.

Matthew's biggest surprise was that, for some unknown reason, eighth-grade

boys' hands were dirtier after they washed them.

Matthew also found that first-grade girls did the best job of all the groups

at washing their hands. Unlike the eighth-grade boys, the young girls'

bacterial levels dropped dramatically after hand-washing.

Brian Parks, science teacher, said that he sees trends in topics chosen by the

students each year. He said that this year there are a lot of advertisements

on television about anti-bacterial soap and disinfectants, and likewise, many

student projects focused on the topic.

There were over a hundred exceptional science projects done by St Rose

students -- everything from investigating the healing power of herbs to

demonstrating the theory of relativity. And, not all the questions were as

momentous as these.

Christina Andrews in seventh grade questioned: "Do plants prefer beer?"

Local scientists judged the contest and selected winners who demonstrated that

they carefully followed the scientific method and thought-out their projects

well.

The Winners

The overall winner at the fair was fifth grader Lisa Dannen. Amazingly Lisa is

one of the younger competitors, going against all students in fifth to eighth

grades, and some fourth graders as well.

Lisa was the only student to receive a score of 30 out of 30 by all three

judges for her project, "The Case of the Mystery Skull."

Lisa found a skull, and through a careful comparison of her skull with

materials she collected from the library and the Internet, she narrowed down

the options and got a positive ID on her skull.

Her project had five curtains, so that the viewer could see, in sequence, that

the skull was not a weasel, not a skunk, not a raccoon, until, under the final

curtain, it was certain that it must be a gray fox.

Erin Dennen had a very different topic, yet it was as detailed and as well

conceived an analysis as Lisa's. Erin won first place in the eighth grade with

her analysis of the factors affecting the efficiency of a water turbine

generator used by the Rocky Glen Mill located on the Poutatuck River in Sandy

Hook.

She made a model of the water flow path through a turbine by using various

diameter tubes, and containers set at various levels.

She wrote in her conclusion: "I have determined that the efficiency of the

generator is 88 percent. The generator company claims that the efficiency is

93.38 percent."

Erin pointed out that the narrow width of the exit pipe (40 inches) reduces

water flow and thereby reduces the amount of electricity generated.

In her well-thought-out conclusion, she concedes that the cost of replacing

the pipe with wider piping, and doing other improvements, would be too high to

warrant the small increase in income from electricity.

Kurt Klingensmith won second place in eighth grade with his project "Does the

Bounciness of a Golf Ball Affect the Distance It Will Travel?"

In the seventh grade, Stephanie Kraushaar won first place for her analysis of

the genetics of the fruit fly.

Second place in the seventh grade went to Jennifer Ratzing for her work on the

quality of the air in Newtown, entitled "Airborne in Newtown."

At the sixth grade level, Colleen Cummins won first place with "Testing the

Waters" and Christian Power came second with models and analysis of "The Best

Weight Efficient Bridge."

At the fifth-grade level Aimee Clavette won with "How do plants grow under

different light conditions" and Brooks Smith came second with "From Stars to

Street Lamps: Their Finger Prints in a Rainbow."