Science Fair

I took some time away from lab yesterday and judged a Jr. High Science Fair with a group of other MCB grad students. It's been awhile since I've been around Jr. Highers. But I can honestly say I enjoyed talking to the kids and was pleasantly surprised by their excitement and pride in their projects as well as their eagerness to tell me what they had learned.

The science projects were done by 6th-9th graders. I judged the 8th grade projects, but did take some time to walk around and look at the other grades as well. Honestly, the 6th grade projects took the prize on layout and organization of the poster, but I think this has a lot to do with parental involvement with the younger students, that is lost on the older students whose posters were commonly unorganized and contained frequent grammar mistakes. There were your standard experiments like which type of bread will mold the fastest, does my dog prefer a yellow or red tennis ball, what happens when you put a candy bar in the microwave, etc. Some of the 6th graders had elaborate ideas that I very much doubt were there own. For example one student wanted to know which liquid (water, oil, vinegar, etc) food coloring would dissociate in the fastest. Not really a 6th grade thought process. And it was pretty obvious from the poster that the parents had played a major role in the project. I don't know how I feel about this. I think it's great parents are getting involved and be a part of the learning process, but I think parents should be there more to assist the child in achieving the child's ideas, not the parent's. I want my kid to stand my their science project and feel proud of their accomplishment, not of their parent's work.

I really enjoyed seeing the creative ideas these kids came up with. Science projects and experiments are unique in that they allow a student to investigate whatever topic interests them. Really the only constraint is the limit of their imagination. I have to say I think I enjoyed the 7th grade projects the best. They still had the child-like ideas, but also a better understanding of the scientific method (controls, multiple trials) and there was less parental oversight. Their posters weren't pretty, but they were by far the most interesting. They contained out of focus pictures of their subjects/experiments. Some included samples of the biproducts of their experiments. For example one student tested how fast meat spoils at various temperatures. They stapled a ziploc bag containing rotten hamburger meat to their poster as a "sample". In their methods they wrote that they had first wanted to leave the meat out on the counter in the kitchen exposed so the meat would be exposed to more germs in the air, but their mom made them put it in a ziploc bag. They also described the process of spoilage, the meat turning from pink to brown, the blood from red to green. And believe it or not, this experiment was done by a girl! She put a picture of herself up on the poster next to the sample of spoiled meat.

There were some good posters. One of the 9th graders tested classmates on their ability to perform what is known as the Stroop test. The Stroop test is a psychological test that tests mental vitality and flexibility. The task takes advantage of the ability to read words more quickly and automatically than naming colors. If a word is printed or displayed in a color different from the color it actually names; for example, if the word "green" is written in blue ink (green) we will say the word "green" more readily than we can name the color in which it is displayed, which in this case is "blue." You can check this out and take a test here. Kinda cool.

Anyway, it was a good time. I enjoyed interacting with the kids and even learned something new.