Kids get extra help with science fair projects

Kids in the Webster Middle School are getting special help in understanding science. Four Washington University students lead their after-school Science Club.

Wash U senior Michelle Encarnacion heads a team of four undergraduates who conduct two-hour Science Club meetings. The Science Club meets every Friday and is open to 6th, 7th and 8th grade kids.

One part of each meeting involves work on projects for the Greater St. Louis Science Fair. The local fair is the largest science competition of its type in the country. The local fair ends with an area-wide judging in April.

Thirteen-year-old Breon Brown has entered science fair projects since she was in 4th grade. But, she said the Science Club has helped her have better science fair entries.

Breon said the Wash U students "push us to do harder science projects."

Last year, Breon was in 7th grade. Her science fair project involved keeping track of growth rates of gerbils who were fed different diets. It involved two gerbil "sisters." One was fed ordinary food and the other got vitamin- and supplement-enriched food.

This year, Breon is in 8th grade. Her science fair project will involve comparing acidity levels of water in five ponds in the City of St. Louis.

Thirteen-year-old Rory Carter is a 7th grader at Webster Middle. He said the Wash U students "help us pick better projects and help us understand them better."

But, the Science Club meetings aren't all business. At one recent meeting, the Wash U students and Webster kids spent time "club building." They are trying to create things that can be passed on to new club members in later years.

In this case, the session included planning a design for a new Science Club T-shirt. The kids also are developing a club cheer, just like ones used for school sports teams.

Then, there was the time the kids helped dissect a dead pig. The Wash U students did most of the cutting but the Webster kids got to feel the organs inside the pig's body.

Eleven-year-old Lydia Daniels said she was surprised "how really soft" the organs were.

Lydia said one of the things she most likes about Science Club is "doing experiments when I don't know how to do them."

That's where the Wash U students come in.

Encarnacion is in her fourth year of undergraduate work at Wash U. She's working on a double-major in biology and history. She and her classmates started last year at Webster Middle School as part of university's science outreach program.

These college students agree to help broaden the younger kids' science experiences.

Michelle said the Webster Middle kids "work well on science projects that involve hands-on experience." For instance, one of the club sessions involved comparing skulls of humans, gorillas and other animals. The college kids brought the skulls.

"They could actually see and touch the brow ridges on the different skulls," she said.

Thirteen-year-old Chauncey Bishop said he liked the experience of digging for artifacts. The college students had put different objects in a pile of dirt. This gave the Webster kids the feeling of being on an actual archeological dig.

Chauncey said he'll ask for help from the college kids in choosing his science fair project. He said, "I either want to work with chemicals or with technology. I like to build things."

Breon Brown found out doing a science experiment sometimes doesn't always work out.

Last year, her gerbil experiment was going along well. The animals were housed in one cage with a divider that kept them separate. The periodic measuring was showing the gerbil getting fortified food was gaining weight faster than the other.

But, one day, Breon came in to find both gerbils together in one side of the cage. They had chewed a hole through the partition.

Encarnacion said, "Gerbils are very social and they wanted to be together. Since they were both white, when they were together we couldn't tell which was which." Therefore, Breon couldn't tell which had been getting which kind of food.

Breon ended up submitting her science project without having any final results. But, science fair judges took that gerbil-caused mishap into consideration. They accepted Breon's project.