Galveston County Science and Engineering Fair 2008
by Keerthi Gottipati
This year once again I entered the Galveston County science fair as a judge, but for a change I was appointed to judge the Junior Engineering section. Last year was sort of a disaster since I was called to judge High School Math and clearly (though I have a Mathematics background until college) these kids knew way more than I ever did. But treading Junior Engineering waters wasn't as risky. I was amazed at how much Physics I actually remembered when the kids began to explain their projects.
One of them was testing the effect of different salt concentrations on the strength of concrete and she seemed to have pretty good idea about how dams are built and things like that which was quite impressive. The second participant studied dependence of water flux in a siphon on the width of the pipe used. This was a case of failed hypothesis where I think (if I still remember) he said a thinner tube would have a higher water flux cause it would take shorter time for vacuum to form inside it. We (three judges per group) quizzed him on his concepts and the kid learnt that what keeps the fuel flowing in the siphon is the atmospheric pressure (he knew it but needed some nudging to say it).
The most interesting of the projects I got to judge was the study on the effect of wing shapes on the flight of a glider. The kid had all possible shapes for the wings, flat, concave (on the upper side), convex, concave-convex (like waves), convex-concave. His results were perfect, the convex flying the best compared to the rest. Though I was there to grade the students' projects- physics being the subject I'm most passionate about-I wanted them to really understand what they were doing. I spent about ten minutes with that kid explaining the beauty of Bernouli's principle. It felt great when the other kids gathered around him to listen to examples we see in daily life that apply Bernouli's principle, like the roofs blowing off in a storm or the car's wind breakers etc. They seemed very curious and for a second even forgot the fact that we were their judges.
The most entertaining project -I think his was the only original project- was one where the kid was trying to measure the effect of alkalinity of different media in a cell on the voltage and current flowing through the circuit. He used fruits to measure this, stuck two electrodes in a tomato, a lemon, a lime and a potato. We suggested he squeeze the juices out next time just for consistency, heh!
In all, the science fair was fun. I think spending time with kids that age gives us would-be-scientists/teachers a perspective of what actually is going on in the real world outside of the lab, a means of assessing where our ideas and views stand in the present stream of thought.