Science Fair preview

Eleven-year-old Gregory Walus has an older brother and sister who sometimes play their music too loud for his taste. 

Greg said, “We’ve been talking about the best way to soundproof my room at home.”

Greg decided to make that problem the subject of his science project for this year’s Greater St. Louis Science Fair. The 54th annual fair will be held April 9-17 at Queeny Park in west St. Louis County. 

The fair is the largest regional fair of its type in the world. It includes elementary and secondary divisions as well as an honor division. 

In this year’s contest, Greg is designing a wall to see which materials do the best job of soundproofing. He’s using sponges, foam board, fiberglass, shredded paper and even packing “peanuts.” 

He’ll use a sound-meter with a microphone to test which material muffles sound  the best. 

Greg and his sixth grade classmate Kristin Goehri both were Discovery Award winners at last year’s fair. The two students at Barrington School in north St. Louis County plan to enter again this year. 

Before they or any students get to display at the metro-wide science fair, they’ll have to win in a local competition at their own school. 

Last year, Greg did an experiment that tested which citrus fruits produced the highest level of electrical voltage. The test involved putting steel and brass nails in the fruit and checking with a voltmeter. 

Electrical current is produced when acid in the fruit reacted to the metal in the nails. It turned out the lemons did the best. Greg said, “You had to take the measurements pretty fast because the acid was used up quickly.” 

Twelve-year-old Kristin is going to focus her experiment this year on the level of acid in fruit juices. She plans to use apple, orange, cranberry, cranapple and tangerine. 

“I drink a lot of juice and I’ve picked the ones that I really drink,” she said. 

The experiment consists of soaking egg shells in the juices. She’ll then keep track of which juices cause the shells to crumble the most, as the acid goes to work. 

Her winning experiment last year involved testing strengths of different brands of facial tissue. She wanted to know which brand was strongest when it got wet. The experiment involved wetting a sheet and adding pennies on the wet spot until the coins broke through. 

“Kleenex was the strongest so that’s what I use now,” she said. 

Twelve-year-old David won a Discovery Award last year with his glider experiment. He wanted to know which design traveled furthest and which stayed in the air the longest. 

For the experiment, he researched different shapes of gliders and then built models. But, they weren’t the ordinary kind made by folding a sheet of note paper. 

His were made of multiple layers of cardboard to make them stronger. That way they could be launched by his homemade launcher, which looked like a big slingshot. 

The Hirth Nimbus 4 model flew the furthest. It featured very long wings and had horizontal tail fins at the top of the tail assembly. The Solitaire Canard model stayed in the air the longest. It had horizontal flaps in the nose but no sidewings in the tail. 

“The whole experiment was fun. I especially liked the making of the gliders and the testing,” David said. 

He doesn’t plan to participate in this year’s fair because he’s got too many other activities. The biggest challenge is his cello playing in the Sixth Grade All-Suburban Honors Orchestra. 

David takes private cello lessons from tutor Masayoshi Kataska. Then there are practice sessions nearly every day. 

He wants a career in professional music or as a doctor.
 
 

Twelve-year-old Alex Sall's experiment idea came while she was attending a St. Louis Cardinal baseball game. 

“I go to a lot of Cardinal games and always wondered why people were using flash cameras in the upper deck when Mark McGwire was batting,” she said.

She decided to test the reach of a flash camera both inside a building and outside. 

But, she found it was difficult to keep variables from creeping into the experiments. 

Alex said, “At first, we used a regular camera and the guy who developed the film tried to help by ‘over exposing’ the print to make up for the under-exposed film from the outside shots. We didn’t want that. We wanted all the film developed and printed the same way,” she said.

Then, when she reshot the outside scenes with a Polaroid camera, the weather had turned cold. That meant the Polaroid film for the outside shots wasn’t as warm as that used on inside shots. “You had to put the Polaroid film under your armpit to warm it to the level indoors,” she said. 

Also, they didn’t have any rooms at home with solid walls they needed to reflect the light of the flash. They wanted that to contrast with the light-absorbing feature of the outdoors. They finally found a window-less corridor in their church to meet their needs. 

Alex said she isn’t planning to compete in this year’s fair but she’s still aiming for a science career. “I want to be a plant geneticist,” she said. One thing that sparked her interest was the high yield of a single tomato plant which she put in a garden plot at home. 
 
 

Last year, 11-year-old Molly Anderson wanted to test the difference in freshness between fruits and vegetables kept on the shelves of a refrigerator and those stored in the ‘crisper’ drawer. 

But, she couldn’t figure out how to measure the differences. 

She finally settled on using only celery because she could use a “bendability” test. She made a chart and then tested how much the stalks of  celery would bend after so many days in the refrigerator. 

The easier the celery was to bend, the less fresh it was. 

“The celery in the ‘crisper’ lasted longer. That was due to the lower humidity in the crisper drawer,” she said. 

Molly hasn’t made up her mind on a career yet. But, she’s active in sports and plays the clarinet in the school band. 
 
 

Eleven-year-old Emily Deffner not only won a Discovery Award last year but her experiment is being used as an example for students who enter this year’s competition. 

Emily’s 2000 experiment tested which level of Off bug repellent was the most effective. The active ingredient in the spray is called DEET. She used apple slices sprayed with different amounts of repellent. “I checked how long each dose kept the bugs away,” she said. 

As expected, the highest dosage did the best job. But, Emily noted the level of DEET that kept the bugs away best was too high for human use. 

Asked what she liked best about the experiment, she said, “I thought it was fun to count the bugs.” 

Although she isn’t planning to enter this year’s contest, she hopes for a scientific career. “I want to be an ER (emergency room) doctor,” she said. 

This year, her busy schedule includes a lot of sports at school. She also plays the piano and “I’m looking for a guitar teacher,” she said. 
 
 

Like Emily, 11-year-old Jimmy Cleve is another Discovery Award winner from last year. 

But, this year, he said he wouldn’t enter. “I’m too caught up in the school admissions testing,” he said. 

Andrews Academy is a private school with classes from kindergarten to sixth grade. So this year, the sixth graders have to apply for admission to new schools. That’s much like high school seniors getting admitted to college. 

Jimmy’s last year’s science project involve testing the ‘sweet tooth’ of kids and adults. 

He bought chocolates in three different price ranges. He wanted to see whether kids had different candy preferences than adults. “I wanted to see how they rated them from best to worst and from cheapest and to most expensive,” he said. 

“I had to scrape off the names stamped in some of the chocolate pieces. The pieces were put in Cups A, B and C. We used cheap candy from Walgreens, Hershey chocolate and then more expensive candy from Fannie Mae,” he said.

“The kids liked the cheapest while the adults leaned to the Fannie Mae chocolate,” he said. “I think the kids liked the cheap candy because it had the most sugar in it,” he added. 

“Kids also thought the cheapest candy was the middle priced one. But, the adults mostly got the price ratings right,” he said. 

About a career, Jimmy said, “I want to start up Cleve Motors to sell cars.” About his own preferences, he said he favors Ferraris and Lamborghines. But, he admits he’ll have to sell more moderately priced cars to build more sales at his future company.