Bright ideas

Science fair yields full spectrum of inventive experiments

By: Cara Latham
   MANSFIELD — Today’s professional scientists may have some competition.
   From studying the fingerprints of their peers, to determining which brand of soda will cause the largest explosion when popular mints (specifically, Mentos) are dropped into the bottle, sixth-graders at Mansfield Township Elementary School have become quite the researchers themselves.
   At a science fair Feb. 22 at the Rutgers EcoComplex, about 85 sixth-graders displayed the result of their individual experiments they have worked on since November.
   The event was sponsored by the Rutgers EcoComplex.
   Before picking their own projects, students had to think about a question they’ve always had and always wanted to answer, said Denise Yockey, a third- through sixth-grade science teacher at the school and organizer of the event.
   And students definitely indulged. Complete with computerized charts explaining their results, details on their research, lists of their methods, and pictures, students displayed trifold posters that could have passed for miniature lab reports.
   After picking a topic, students did research at the Burlington County Library, learned how to set up their projects and received guidance from teachers along the way, in the days leading up to the science fair, she said.
   "It’s a collaborative effort between all of the sixth-grade teachers, the librarian, the computer teacher and the science lab teacher," she said. "They go to the computer lab to print our their graphs and their charts."
   Sixth-grader Brian Perez, 11, said the basis for his project, in which he studied various types of fingerprints, was that "all the fingerprints are going to be different although they might look the same."
   He took a sample of 50 fingerprints from his classmates to determine which type of fingerprints were the most prominent. After doing research, he found that there are three types of fingerprint types — the whorl, the arch and the loop.
   Brian, who said he thought that most people would have the arch fingerprint, was surprised to learn that most people’s fingerprints were in the shape of the loop.
   Rebecca Szatkowski, 12, said she chose to study whether carnations would survive longer when placed in salt water or fresh water. By placing two carnations in a cup of freshwater and two in saltwater, the carnations in the salt water looked all but dead on the second day of the 12-day experiment, as her pictures displayed.
   Jaelen Peacock, 12, had a similar green-thumbed approach to his project. He cut one hole in a spray-painted black box and placed a house plant inside so that it would only reach the sunlight a little bit.
   "I was trying to see if a plant would position itself toward the sunlight," he said. The plant moved a foot and a half toward the sunlight, and even grew an inch during the week he kept it in the box, he said.
   Dylan Cahill, 12, got his idea from watching a Discovery Channel show, Mythbusters. On the show, they dropped Mentos candy into 2-liter bottles of soda and watch the soda explode into the air.
   However, Dylan took it a step further and wanted to determine which type of soda would create the biggest explosion. So, he took a few varieties of soda and dropped eight pieces of Mentos in each bottle one by one, and as the soda shot into the air, he used a yardstick to measure the height each produced. He found the Diet Pepsi caused the biggest reaction, as the soda shot up 59 inches into the air.
   "There’s a lot of ingredients in Diet Pepsi," Dylan said, explaining his theory for why the diet soda shot up, which is what he predicted would happen.
   Others were able to utilize their taste buds after they completed their projects. Friends Justin Capone, 11, and Dylan Lawson, 11, who set up their trifolds on the table next to each other.
   Justin performed an experiment where he melted both milk chocolate and dark chocolate to see which of the two would melt faster.
   "My hypothesis was that I think dark chocolate melts quicker, but it ends up it didn’t," he said. "The dark chocolate took 65 (seconds) and the milk chocolate took 38 seconds" to melt. "I think the reason the milk chocolate melted quicker is because it has liquid in it."
   The best part of the experiment was eating the chocolate afterwards, he said.
   Meanwhile, Dylan Lawson, said got the idea for his project while he was looking through a book. He almost didn’t realize that one of the illustrations on one of the pages depicted a snake, because it blended in with its habitat.
   He took pieces of different colored construction paper, and different pieces of Skittles candy and placed the Skittles on the construction paper. Sometimes, he placed a red-colored skittle on a red piece of construction paper, which made it harder for people to see right away, while in other instances, he would put a green Skittle on a purple piece.
   His relatives, meanwhile, grabbed the Skittles they were able to see more clearly.
   "It was my mom and little brothers who were eating them," he said. "They were the predators of my experiment."