Winning science fair idea from big hail storm

Twelve-year-old Ryan Kelley's idea for his division winning entry in the 2002 Greater St. Louis Science Fair came from a bad family experience. His family home was heavily damaged in a gigantic hail storm last year.

Kelley and his family live in north St. Louis County. That's in the area of St. Louis where a storm a year ago caused over $1 billion in damage. The Kelley's home roof and siding had to be replaced.

One of Ryan's outside activities is as a local severe weather spotter. He's been doing that for three years for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That's the federal agency that issues official weather forecasts across the country.

He and his brother, Shawn, reported to NOAA about the storm has it was happening. Heavy rain and hail 1 1/2 to 2-inch in size hit their neighborhood.

After that experience, Ryan decided to focus his science fair idea on weather forecasting. His experiment compared forecast accuracy of NOAA and two local television stations, Channel 5 and Channel 2. His science experiment was titled, "Did It Rain on NOAA?"

For five months, he kept track of forecasts of temperature and other weather conditions for the three groups. His conclusion was that NOAA's forecasts were more accurate.

Science Fair judges were so impressed with Ryan's work that he was given one of three first place medals in the 6th grade division. This was the second time Kelley had a science fair project make the finals. He was a third place ribbon winner two years ago.

A total of 1,800 science projects were entered in the elementary and middle school divisions in the 2002 Greater St. Louis Science Fair. The entries were displayed and judged last month at Queeny Park in west St. Louis County.

Another 1,500 science projects were entered in the secondary division of the fair.

The students who make it to the finals usually have to win at local school fairs. In all, the Greater St. Louis Science Fair is the largest competition of its type in the country.

Twelve-year-old Sydney Seidel of Chesterfield Day School was a 5th grade division winner. Her science fair idea also grew out of a family experience. But, this one wasn't as traumatic as that of Ryan Kelley.

Her experiment dealt with various sugar cookie recipes. She baked a variety of cookies with different ingredients left out of each batch. Like, a sugar cookie without sugar. Or a sugar cookie without flour.

The idea occurred to Sydney while she and her family was baking Christmas cookies last fall. "Cooking is going to be important to me in the future. It's important to know what different ingredients do for a recipe," she said.

She admitted some of the cookie recipes--with different ingredients left out--tasted pretty bad. "But, I had to taste them because the experiment was about taste testing," she said.

This was Sydney's first time in the science fair finals.

Twelve-year-old Jenna Clack of the Barrington Elementary School in north county was another 6th grade division winner. She got her "Blast Off" experiment idea from her dad.

"My dad did the experiment when he was a kid so I decided to try that also," she said.

The experiment's goal was to measured the distance tiny "match rockets" traveled when fired. The variable was the size of exhaust holes punched in the matches before ignition.

Jenna varied the hole sizes by using different sewing needles to make the exhaust holes smaller or larger. "Match rockets" with smaller exhaust holes traveled farther, she found.

Another 6th grade division winner was Melissa Elliott from Chesterfield Day School. She got her idea for the experiment from the internet. It was titled, "Osmosis." Osmosis is a process by which liquids get through membranes which have no obvious holes.

She said setting up her experiment turned out to be pretty tricky. It involved cutting holes in the shells of fresh eggs without puncturing the membrane just inside the shell. Melissa admitted that she broke "quite a few."

The goal is to find out how fluids passes through membranes under different conditions.

Melissa has been entering the science fair competition since she was in second grade. It's her second time in the finals. She earned a blue ribbon and a discovery medal in the previous entry.

For full results of this year's fair, go to www.jracademy.com and click on Kids section.