The Science Fair at Abington Junior High School this week was a HUGE success of scientific investigation and presentation. Over 250 student-created projects were presented to parents, teachers, administrators, community visitors, and other students.
The projects included a wide range of interesting subjects including real world applications. Projects included: how many times do you need to shuffle a deck of cards?; how long can elastic items be stretched before failure?; the stroop effect on how the brain processes names of colors when the actual colors are different; checking for mold; how liquids affect magnetism; benefits of solar energy; how a potato can generate electricity; what contaminants are found in drinking water, and much more. A fascinating experiment that studied if brainwaves can affect inanimate objects attracted much attention, including a 6abc television report.
The event was the Junior High School’s 24th annual science fair at the school. The projects were extremely interesting, highly creative in their approach, and implemented and presented extremely well. Clearly, over recent years projects at the Science Fair have become much better – more sophisticated and more closely aligned with current scientific methods. The use of technology in presenting data, including extremely effective computer-generated charts and graphs, has grown in recent years. Collaboration, a characteristic sought after by industry and science, was extremely evident as students conferred and worked with each other, worked with faculty, and worked with parents. There were many parents, teachers, and staff present and more students stayed after school to tour the fair, judge the projects, and confer with each other. Visitors commented that they learned a great deal from the presentations.
Selected projects will be presented at the Montgomery County Research Competition where the junior high school students typically do very well.
