Three Dunstable School students wanted to make sure when they entered the Westlock District Science Fair they were well prepared.
And thanks to the rest of their schoolmates, they were confident they would be able to put their best foot forward.
On Tuesday, March 1, Nicolas, Alexis and Morgan gave their classmates a preview of what attendees of the science fair in Westock would see later in the week.
Dunstable School Principal, Lorna Hiemstra, said the school has participated in the science fair for many years and despite the comparatively small number of entries, Dunstable School students have won a number of awards for their projects, one of them being Grade 3 student Alexis.
For the last two years, Alexis has won awards for science projects, something she hopes to repeat with her entry on the protective qualities of the various strengths of sunscreen lotion.
To test her hypothesis that the higher a suntan lotion’s Sun Protection Factor (SPF), the more protection it provides, Alexis put three different sheets of paper under a heat lamp.
One piece of paper she didn’t put any protective lotion on while on the other two sheets Alexis applied suntan lotion with SPF factors of 15 and 35, respectively. In order to make sure all things were equal, she made sure she applied the exact same amount of suntan lotion on each sheet of paper. She also made sure each piece of paper was exposed to the same amount of light and heat by making certain they were all exposed under the bulb for the same amount of time and that they were equal distance apart from the bulb.
“It was just so cool to be able to watch the papers discolour and burn under the heat lamp and how the suntan lotion helped prevent burning,” she said.
For the record Alexis found that the higher the SPF rating a suntan lotion had, the less the paper burned.
Her brother Nicholas, who is in Grade 5, also entered the Westlock Science Fair.
“My mother has gotten into two car accidents and she suggested I might want to do my science project on wearing seatbelts when driving or being a passenger in a car,” he said.
To prove his hypothesis that wearing seatbelts do reduce injuries and deaths in motor vehicle collisions, he simulated a single car and occupant collision.
To simulate a road and a hill, Nicholas used a stack of books and a piece of flooring material to create the roadway. At the end of the road he put a large log to simulate a wall or a building.
He then put a passenger, an uncooked egg, in the cockpit of a convertible type car and pushed it down the hill where it would then hit the wall. Nicolas performed this experiment twice when the Barrhead Leader visited, once when the egg was securely fashioned in the car with a harness and one without. When the egg was properly strapped in it survived, however when it wasn’t, the egg was ejected out of the car where it missed the wall and crashed to the floor.
Morgan, a Grade 3 student, decided for her project she would investigate how different liquids affected the growth of candy, specifically gummy bears.
In her hypothesis, she put a single gummy bear into four liquids, all of which had the same volume and were at room temperature. The liquids she chose were Sprite, water, orange juice and a water/vinegar solution. Morgan did this test two times, once submerging the gummy bears for 12 hours and then for 24 hours.
When asked what surprised her most about the experiment, she said she thought all of the gummy bears would grow in size in all the liquids and in both time periods.
“The gummy bear actually ended up dissolving in the water and vinegar solution when it was left in it for 24 hours,” she said.
