From attempts at making perpetual motion machines, to making a battery from a lemon, the gym at 100 Mile Elementary was taken up by brightly coloured display boards for the school's annual science fair on Feb. 22.
Students, many of whom started working on their projects at the start of January, detailed their questions, hypotheses, procedures, results and conclusions on the boards — all part of the scientific method.
Grade 6/7 teacher Jim Price is the school co-ordinator for the science fair. He makes doing science fair projects part of his science curriculum.
"They provide students the opportunity to investigate something of interest, to go through the scientific process which ties in with the new learning curriculum," he says. "[Students] really develop their reasoning skills, their work habits — because they have to do a lot of it independently. They learn technology."
In addition to being the co-ordinator for the 100 Mile Elementary's fair, Price is also the co-ordinator for the district fair and is also on the regional science fair committee in Kamloops. He's been promoting science fair projects for 30 years.
Students from Grades 4 to 7 are judged at the fair and the best in each category move to the district fair held March 8 at 100 Mile Elementary.
"Each year the projects get better and better. They get more in depth, they get more curious, they are determined to do their best."
Vanessa Shearer was one of three students to tie for first place in the Grade 7 category with her project on "The RH Factor." Shearer tested the blood types of her immediate family members to determine who had positive and negative blood types and whether having different parents would result in different blood types — something not necessarily the case, it turns out.
Shearer was inspired by the work her mom does as a lab technician — Shearer herself wants to be a doctor when she grows up.
"I am really into science. I find it really fascinating," she says.
Jonathon Oldegbers also tied for first with Shearer. His project, "Immune System Memory," demonstrated the defenses a body uses to kill pathogens. Using a jar filled with salt to represent a body, Oldegbers inserted iron filings to represent an infection. Oldegbers then used magnets to represent macrophages — white blood cells that 'eat' invasive particles in the body — to remove the iron fillings from the salt.
Shearer used the demonstration to explain how the body manages to "remember" how to fight various pathogens.
"The fun part was just doing the research because I got to find out more and more about the influenza virus and your immune system," he says.
Melody Watkins was the third Grade 7 student to tie for first place. Her project, "Emotion Commotion" was inspired by her own life.
"Lately, I've been really interested in emotion because I'm going through the stage where emotion is completely taking control of my body," she says.
Watkins took surveys of students in Grades 4 to 7 to find out how emotional they reported feeling on a daily basis. She hypothesised that students in Grade 7 would feel more negative and more emotional than the younger grades because of hormones.
As it turns out, the Grade 7 students reported feeling much more positive than the Grade 4 and 5 students.
While Watkins says she wasn't a fan of counting out the numbers for each individual survey, because there were "hundreds of them," finding out the numbers was interesting.
"I like that you can always tell what has more or less of things," she says. "I like that you can always find out, most of the time, the truth about things."
On a personal level, she also says the results surprised her.
"I learned that emotions don't have to change you. That you can be the boss of them and that you don't have to be negative all the time because you can also be positive about things," she says.
For Price, it's neat to see students excited about their projects.
"You know what they are learning is what they are interested in. The biggest thing at the start of a project is getting a good topic, getting a good question and then going from there. Then the rest takes care of itself. Like I tell them, it doesn't matter if it is a success or a failure as long as you have learned something from it and go through the process."
Shearer, Oldegbers and Watkins will join many other students from the school in attending the district science fair. Winners from the district fair will attend the regional fair in Kamloops.
The regional and district fairs allow students to meet others with similar interests who are equally as keen says Price. But overall the science fairs provide a positive benefit to students.
"It makes them want to find out more, not just to be satisfied with reading a textbook. They can take a concept and they can make it their own," he says. "It makes them want to know more. It makes them really curious about way more things than just coming to school and going home. There's something that's of interest to them.
Results
Grade 4
First: Eric Kissick
Second (tie): Olivia Harper; Ty Kreschuk
Third: Quin Grantham
Grade 5
First: Ethan Mori/Ashton Chretien
Second: Lucas Thomas
Third (tie): Kurtis Porter; Payton Edlund
Grade 6
First: Emily Donnelly
Second (tie): Mason Pincott; Sienna Lamarche; Holly Johnston
Third (tie): Julia Siclari; Ava Pettman
Grade 7
First (tie): Vanessa Shearer; Jonathon Oldegbers; Melody Watkins
Second (tie): Hailey Bucknell; Amy Jordaan/Noah Geerts
Third (tie): Ty Butler; Sophie Jensen; Megan Balbirnie