"TERRI PETERS MEMORIAL SCIENCE FAIRS"

(April 6, 2009) Each of the Riverhead Central School District elementary schools conducted their annual “Terri Peters Memorial Science Fair” right before the spring recess. Many of the students brought their parents to the evening viewing of their experiments at their schools.

Earlier in the afternoon, judges from each of the schools surveyed the experiments to choose those winning experiments of young scientists that would become eligible to represent their school at Brookhaven National Lab’s annual science fair. The judges at Riley Avenue’s science fair included three high school students from Riverhead High School’s Science Club, Adam McKay, Amanda Gallo, and Anna Skylarova, with Science Club Advisor Bob Jester.  The students  checked out a class project inspired by an earlier visit of Science Club members to two first grade classes inviting the first graders to help them with their recycling efforts at the high school by conducting an experiment to determine which of three materials is most biodegradable: Paper? Styrofoam? Or Leaves?

Another beautifully illustrated experiment done by Mrs. Hess’ kindergarten class caught their eye. Needing some expert input, three of Mrs. Hess’ students, Odin, Skip, and Kaleigh, were invited into the gymnasium to explain their class experiment entitled “How Our Sense of Smell Helps Us Taste.”

“Well, you see,” explained Odin, “we had two cups of applesauce to taste—one with cinnamon and one just plain—and first we had to put on blindfolds and nose clips and then guess which was plain and which one had cinnamon.”

“Yeah,” added Skip, “and we found out that our sense of smell helps us taste things, and that girls have more taste buds on their tongues.”

“Yes,” concurred Kaleigh pointing to the class tongue, “girls have more taste buds.”

Mrs. Hess recorded the results: We found that out of 20 children tested, while wearing nose clips only 8 children guessed correctly. When using our sense of smell (without nose clips)—14 children guessed correctly.

Conclusion: We are able to taste things more easily when using ours sense of smell.

Source of Error: Some of our classmates had colds, so their noses were not able to smell very will with or without nose clips.

Skip’s experiment was adjacent to their class’ experiment. He pointed at his display and his experiment whereby he compared the speed of matchbox vehicles. He had hypothesized that the vehicle with the most wheels (the semi-truck) would travel the fastest; however, the race car went the fastest.

Other experiments asked ever-pertinent science fair questions such as “Does Water Boil Faster Plain or With Salt?” Answer: Water with salt does boil faster than plain water. Or—“Which brand of gum keeps its flavor the longest?” (Trident, Juicy Fruit, or Extra?) Conclusion: Juicy Fruit.

Another high level experiment tested playground safety, questioning, “Which Playground Surface is the Safest?” Conclusion: “My experiment proved that rubber mulch is the safest playground surface. I dropped the eggs many times on this surface and it never even cracked a little. I also feel that it is good for the environment to use recycled materials for playgrounds.”

“The level of thinking in some of these experiments is really quite excellent,” noted Mr. Jester, who teaches Riverhead High School’s Science Research classes. “Several of my students just returned from sharing their experiments at the Long Island Science Congress, which was held at SUNY-Farmingdale. About 800 high school scientists from all over Long Island attended the Congress. RHS took seven students and five experiments. They had to spend about four hours right next to their experiment because they never knew when a judge would stop by for an explanation of what they did. It was the first year we attended and we really learned a lot. I was very impressed with the level of science and the experiments that some of the students conducted, and they were all amazingly well behaved. They’re very serious about science.”