With intensive research and days that turned out to be experimentation, each high school student stood in front of their projects, fully prepared to explain the work from beginning to end.
With over 50 projects laid out with examples, pictures and evidently detailed descriptions for their conclusions, they were all impressive, to say the least.
On Friday from 3-5 p.m. the North Idaho Science Fair had a public showcase of student projects that filled the International Ballroom at the Bruce M. Pitman Center at the University of Idaho.
Hosted by the Idaho STEM Action Center, the projects ranged from the following: behavioral and social sciences; earth, environmental and plant sciences; physical sciences and engineering; mathematics and computer science; and animal, biomedical and microbiological sciences.
Holly Brannon, a senior at Grangeville High School, chose to explore how steam from a papermill could be used for plants, and titled her project “Plants vs. Heavy Metals.”
Although by the end of her research she would conclude that “it is possible to use plants to help remove heavy metals from factory effluent,” she quickly learned trial and error was going to be an important part of her project.
“My plants got caught up in the December airline meltdown, so they ended up arriving much colder and much later than expected,” Brannon said. “They arrived in a state of shock.”
Using duckweed, algae and elodea as part of her research, she said the duckweed couldn’t recover from the shock and realized the delay of arrival was a test within itself.
“This would not work in a real-world application because factories want the cheapest, easiest method and something that can’t survive shipping is not going to be the easiest,” Brannon said.
Laughing off the difficulties of her project, she mentioned she still had fun and credited Shaun Bass, her science teacher, for his support and suggestions throughout her project.
“Holly’s project was a perfect example of trial and error,” said Bass, who has been a teacher for 30 years. “We couldn’t catch a break but that’s part of the research too.”
Austin Crea and Dominic Ledred, students from Lewiston High School, took a different route for their project and created a solar-powered lawn mower with a 3D printer, with a $200 budget from their school.
Because there were two of them working on this project they had to choose who worked on what parts.
“It’s difficult being able to say how much time something’s gonna take for one person,” Crea said. “This might take him a certain amount of time and it might take me a certain amount of time — so coming together and seeing who needs to do what can be hard.”
Terri Varnado, an engineering teacher at Lewiston High, said all projects were fully thought out beforehand.
“It’s a year-long project and they’ve all worked really hard,” said Varnado, who’s been teaching for 35 years. “You can see by evidence from the posters what they’ve done— it’s publishable.
“Some of these students worked directly with engineers that mentor them,” he said. “We’re lucky enough in Lewiston to be surrounded by fabulous industry — manufacturing companies willing to give up their time to help them be successful.”
