Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 6, 1995 TAG: 9503080008
SECTION: NEWSFUN PAGE: NF-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NANCY GLEINER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Maybe you'd also like to know if wearing certain colors in the summer can keep you cooler or if listening to different types of music can affect your grades.
Middle school students have been investigating these and other topics for their science fair projects. Of course, there are some subjects that may never relate to your daily life, but doing a science project can help you in many ways, even if you're not planning a career in science (and even if you don't like it).
``By using the scientific method, you can learn critical thinking skills,'' said Robert Giles, a science teacher at Cave Spring Junior High. ``If you have good thinking skills, you can see through a lot of what people are saying; you can examine the evidence and not just accept what they say.''
It's a lot like being a detective.
Any large project also teaches research techniques (useful in all subjects), computer skills, organization and how to prepare a display or presentation.
``One of the important lessons of a science project is learning how to follow it through from the beginning to the end,'' Giles said.
The first and most important step is deciding what to do.
``Find something you like doing,'' Adam Childers advised. ''If you're not interested in it, it's no fun at all.''
Childers, an eighth-grader at James Madison Middle School, wanted to find out ``Just How Far Will Bees Go?''. Childers set up purple cardboard flowers he had made, with honey in the centers, at different distances from the hives in his backyard. (Last year's project taught him bees like purple best.) Next came the hard part.
Childers sat and watched the bees and counted them for 30-45 minutes at a time. He found out the bees wanted to do the least amount of work they could get away with and went to the closest flower more than the others.
Sounds like bees aren't so different from people.
He took photographs of the flowers and hives - he couldn't bring in any live bees for his display.
Next year, Childers will place the flowers at different angles from the hive and see if that affects where they go. He has some work to do before that, because ``all our bees just died. We have to start again in the spring,'' he said.
Kari Morrison, a Cave Spring Junior High sixth-grader, staged the ``Battle of the Colas.'' She tested almost 60 children's taste buds to see if they could tell the difference between Coke, Pepsi and RC Cola. She gave each pupil coded samples of each drink (only she knew which was which), asked them to identify them and tallied the results.
She found out that most RC drinkers could tell the difference, but few Coke and Pepsi drinkers could. (That might not make their advertisers very happy.)
Even though Morrison doesn't like science very much, she likes to do projects and learned ``you can really understand science better'' by doing them.
As you cruise the aisles at a science fair, you sometimes see the same projects year after year - what affects plant growth, which detergent works best, soil tests, rainfall measurements - but each participant has learned something in doing even the simplest experiment, even if it's that they really don't want to be a scientist.
Sometimes, kids don't even realize what they've learned, such as how to do research, how to plan ahead (not everyone learns that soon enough!), and how to organize a display.
One thing you notice at a science fair is the variety of subjects you can choose from. Topics range from ``How Juicy Is Your Apple?, to a project which measures what type of color-blindness dogs have, to making a forced-air heating system, to ``How does the amount of static a balloon receives affect the amount of time the balloon will stick to the wall?'' (ah, the old rubbing-it-in-your-younger-brother's-hair trick).
Ever let your lips touch the water faucet at the school's fountain? You might not do it again. Daniel Penn, a ninth-grader at Cave Spring Junior High, took samples from the bowls of water fountains and tested them for bacteria. He found evidence of the bacteria that cause strep and staph infections, but probably not enough to make you sick.
Still, if you looked at the microscope slides he had as part of his display, you might be careful where you put your mouth the next time you take a drink at school.
Brian Arbogast, a student at Woodrow Wilson Middle School, learned a valuable lesson when he tested to see if the phases of the moon affect seed germination. Because most of his seeds died, he discovered that it wasn't a good project to do during the winter and that seeds don't like soil soaked with cold water. But his project was well planned and well organized and it was a winner anyway.
Every scientist runs into problems of one kind or another. A project doesn't have to prove what it set out to do to be good. What makes a good project? As a science teacher, Giles said he ``likes to see where kids, when they have finished with the project, have grown as students.''
Giles, who organizes and judges science fairs, has a list of criteria that judges look for in projects. This includes creativity, originality, background research and a check to see if the scientific method has been followed. Displays are checked for neatness and to see if the experiment is explained clearly without being too technical.
Not every good project is a science fair winner and not every winner gets a good grade from the science teacher. Teachers and judges don't even discuss the projects together.
While interviewing several pupils for this article, this reporter conducted her own science experiment. If she were doing this for a science fair, it would have read something like this :
Purpose: To see how many kids think science fair projects are useless.
Hypothesis: Most think it's useless to do a science fair project, except maybe the science geeks.
Procedure: Interview several pupils at science fairs for their opinions.
Materials: Tape recorder and tape.
Data: Every pupil interviewed thought science fair projects were useful (some did admit they were a pain to do, though).
Conclusion: Hypothesis was totally incorrect. Kids think science fair projects are useful, whether the kids are geeks or not.
by CNB