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By Douglas McCulloch
Hometown Weekly Staff
Science was on display at the Deerfield School last Wednesday as the school hosted its annual science fair.
Children from all levels of the school, from kindergarteners all the way up to fifth graders, showcased science experiments they had been working on in teams of two to four for the past month.
Every team was assigned to come up with an initial hypothesis, and to design an experiment that would prove, or in some cases, disprove their initial hypothesis. Teams were then tasked with creating an exhibit to show to the community at the science fair.
For this year’s science fair, students came up with many different experiments covering a variety of different subject areas. Some students created volcanoes, while others dove into robotics and electronics. Other students designed and built various structures, such as bridges.
Fourth graders Dylan Walsh, Alex Dayton and Jason Guo built a working underwater robot for their science fair project. They developed an initial design, and decided to conduct experiments to ensure that their design would allow the robot to move around in all directions underwater.
They ordered the main components for the robot online, and created the robot out of motors and PVC pipe. But the team did run into several problems that required reworking of their original design.
“Once we put the propellers on it would start moving backwards, so we put the motors on the inside” Guo explained.
Guo noted that the team determined that the new motors were creating weight distribution problems, and moving the motors closer to the center of the robot helped to correct the problem and let the robot freely move around in a fish tank they had set up at their display.
Vivian Bean and Cara McManus decided to conduct an ice melting experiment for their science project. The two were doing research to get an idea on what to do for their project, when they found an experiment online about creating colorful designs in ice using salt and food coloring.
“We found this really cool experiment idea online. I love colors so we decided to do it,” Bean said.
The two conducted an experiment to see if melting ice using salt could create tunnels in the ice that could be filled in using food coloring, creating colored patterns in the ice. After some trial and error with ice that was melting too fast, they were eventually able to create colorful ice blocks.
James Stefanelli and Luke Preskenis created a paper mache volcano for their project to study what happens when a volcano erupts. The two created the volcano and used baking soda and vinegar to simulate a volcanic eruption, and studied how the “lava” flowed down the volcano.
“It was fun and we learned a lot too,” Stefanelli said.
Deerfield School principal Joshua Baumer was impressed with the variety of experiments on display this year. He noted that every year he is impressed with what his students come up with, and enjoys seeing how the kids face obstacles that they run into with their projects.
“I always love it when there is an aspect of their experiments that did not work as they had planned,” Baumer said. “That’s where the real learning takes place.”
Baumer noted the goal of the science fair, in addition to teaching kids the scientific method, is to give kids a project to work on with their peers outside of school.
“The thing I always enjoy the most is that students join together with their classmates around an area of interest to them to explore,” Baumer said.
Douglas McCulloch is an editor at Hometown Weekly. He can be reached at news@hometownweekly.net and followed on Twitter at @doug_mcculloch.
