Do you know why wolves are an important part of the ecosystem or how and why finding a person’s fingerprints can be beneficial to solving crime?
The answers to those and many other questions could be found at Barrhead Elementary School on Monday, Feb. 29, during the school’s annual Science Fair.
The Science Fair is an offshoot of the school’s annual Science Expo, which was held on Friday, Feb. 26.
Lou Steeves, a member of the Science Fair committee which organizes both the expo and fair, said the purpose of each event differs slightly.
She said one of the main purposes of the Science Expo is to get students excited about science and to learn how to come up with an idea for a project and carry it out until completion.
“I just love the idea of allowing students to do a whole project from start to finish and then having them be able to share and teach other people,” she said.
About 250 students from Grades 4 to 6 took part in the Science Expo.
Steeves said the Science Fair expands on the basic idea of trying to spark students’ interest in science, but takes it a step further.
For example, the majority of the projects in the Science Expo were started and completed in the classroom while students who decided to take part in the Science Fair had an opportunity to expand their project or come up with a new project for the fair.
Another difference is that participants in the Science Fair have an opportunity to move on and represent the school at the Edmonton Regional Science Fair in April.
“The Science Expo is more just about learning how to complete a project and teaching others about what they learned,” Steeves said, adding that is why the projects were not judged.
In the science fair, because the students have the opportunity to qualify for the regional event in Edmonton, the students’ projects were evaluated and given scores.
To evaluate the projects Steeves asked business people, retired teachers and other members of the community to act as judges.
“We gave each of our volunteer judges a form that helped them score each of the projects,” she said, adding the judges based their scores on specific criteria. “Scientific thought is the main one, followed by originality, skill, dramatic value and overall presentation.”
In order to receive an official score, each of the 21 projects entered into the fair had to be evaluated by three different judges, with the final score being an average of the three evaluations.
Kathleen Norton, a retired BES teacher, said she was very impressed by the effort and quality of the projects.
“Every one of the students’ projects I have seen so far have been just amazing,” she said.
Amber V., a Grade 6 student, said she decided to do her project on fingerprints because they have always fascinated her.
“I have always liked to look at them,” she said, adding through researching her project she found out many facts about fingerprints she never knew.
“Most people know that every person has their own set of unique fingerprints. But did you know people from different ethnic background’s fingerprints have common traits?” she asked, adding that fingerprint patterns can be broken into three different categories, arches, loops and whorls. “People who have an African background tend to have plenty of arches, while people of European descent tend to have frequent loops and people with an Asian background have a very high frequency of whorls.”
Grade 4 receiving Gold - Ethan Swan with his project “Deadly Dry Firing - Hardy Fischer - Fresh Water vs Salt Water
- Jamie Gourlay - Tasting with your Nose.
Grade 5 receiving Gold - Jordis Chapman - Sugar vs Sugar
Grade 6 receiving Gold - Katie Wooten - What are the Elements of the Outer Gas Giants
- Gwen Whittaker - The Flammability Difference between Synthetic and Natural Cloth.
