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Show r r Students show off skills at Science Fair By CHERIE HUBER Clipper Correspondent Science is still alive and well in the Davis County elementary schools. That was the general feelings feel-ings of visitors at the completion of a science fair at one area elementary school where the students showed their ability to use the scientific method to find answers to questions. ques-tions. There were 160 displays at the Science Fair at J.A. Taylor Elementary Elemen-tary School in Centerville. Children from the fourth, fifth and sixth grades participated with interesting and thought-provoking displays of experiments they had completed. Six of the students from each grade level were selected to exhibit their displays again at the district Science Fair, which will be held on March 17 at Clearfield High. That fair is in conjunction with the junior and senior high science fairs and will be open to the pubUc from 5:30 until 6:30 p.m. The awards presentations will be at 6:30 p.m. Parents will have an opportunity to see what a science fair is about and to gather ideas for future science projects for their children. One of the most popular displays at the Taylor Science Fair was one by Andrea Garner. She typed visitors blood for them by pricking their finger and taking a blood sample. Andrea will be one of the finalists at Clearfield High. Another finalist, Jana Arbuckle, put together an exhibit that showed how harmful fats are in our diets. Other exhibits were equally interesting. in-teresting. Spencer White made a real "bottle" rocket out of a 2-liter bottle bot-tle by pumping it full of air with a modified bicycle pump. He had pictures pic-tures to show the plastic bottle soaring soar-ing up into the air. Another display by Matthew Flanders showed the effects of air pressure. Matthew boiled water in a screw top can. After it steamed for a minute, he put the lid on and rapidly cooled the can. The can was crushed crush-ed by the outside air pressure. Makenzie Crosby had a display with three different cough syrups. By studying the ingredients in each medicine, she found that one medicine med-icine was better than the other two. Aaron Echols did a series of experiments ex-periments to show what makes an egg float in water. He showed that when there is enough salt, baking soda or sugar in the water, an egg will float because the water is heavier than the egg. Janae Vanhille also did an experiment ex-periment with floating liquids. She showed that liquids like Karo syrup, glycerine, water, oUve oil and rubbing rubb-ing alcohol could be stacked up in a tall glass if the liquids were added in order of weight. Another display by Heidi Smith asked the question, "Does salt make a difference in bread?' She baked various combinations of salt in the bread dough to find her answer. an-swer. "The displays and experiments covered life science, physical science and earth science," said Mrs. Bryant, who coordinated the fair. She teaches science to 82 of the sixth grade participants in the fair. In conjunction with the project, Mrs. Bryant gathered some statistics of her own by doing a survey of the parents and children. She received completed surveys from 36 parents and 96 students. About 77 percent of the students and 83 percent of the parents said they enjoyed the science fair. But 60 percent of the students said they were stressed by having to put together the project Parents also reported that 56 percent of their children taking part in the fair were stressed. Despite the stress from the effort to put together a good display, 92 percent of the students said that in all it was a good activity. J.A. Taylor Elementary had not had a science fair in several years. Mrs. Bryant now has plans to alternate a science fair and an inventors' fair on a yearly basis to keep the students interest in science and creativity high. 1 V d A? Yj Spencer White made a real "bottle" rocket out of a 2-liter bottle bot-tle by pumping it full of air with a modified bicycle pump. He had pictures to show the plastic bottle soaring up into the air. |
