WESTLOCK - Gracie Wolff and Leah Olsen wanted to know if dogs were attracted to a particular colour.
They devised an experiment to test that out. They placed different coloured paper on the ground and a doggy treat on each piece of paper. Then they got three dogs — Kona, Beau and Bumper —and took note of which colour they picked when they went for the treat.
Because they’re good scientists, they repeated the experiment three times inside of a car dealership where the scents are neutral — that was one of the controlled variables, they couldn’t have the dogs’ senses distracted by anything.
The two St. Mary School Grade 5 students presented their findings at the 51st annual Westlock and Local Science Fair March 4 at the community hall.
Initially, they hypothesized the dogs would either go for blue (said Leah) or green (said Gracie). As it turns out, most dogs went for purple. They concluded it might have been a preferred choice because it was the darkest paper they had laid out.
Not to mention that in a dog’s colour perception spectrum, green and purple dominate.
It’s important to know this, they said, so you can be better prepared when you choose a toy for your puppy.
Theirs was one of the 59 projects across the hall presented by 96 kids from eight different schools in the area — and two homeschooled.
Sydney Provencal and Ava Properzi, both in Grade 4 at Westlock Elementary School, had a different curiosity: what happens to your teeth when you drink different kinds of liquids?
“Instead of using teeth, because they have different tooth enamel, they’re all different, we used hardboiled eggs because they’re all the same,” explained Sydney.
The eggs were a suitable replacement for teeth – and in any case, where were they going to find teeth in the first place?
They kept the eggs in eight different liquids: water as a control, tea, lemonade, fruit punch, lemon lime Gatorade, Coke, diet Coke and coffee.
When they surveyed the class, people thought that coffee would stain the most.
“We tested them out and we found out that at Day 3 there wasn’t that much difference, but there was a bit. And then on day 5, they were in there for 120 hours. We took colour strips and matched the colour the best we could to the colour of the liquid, then matched what the egg was,” explained Sydney.
Ava said they also wanted to know about pH levels, “even though we don’t really know what it means because that’s for Grade 5.”
Here’s the interesting bit: fruit punch caused the most staining on the egg and it had the lowest pH level. That’s because fruit punch is acidic, so it turned the pH paper pink.
“We always wondered what liquids would do to your teeth, if we didn’t brush our teeth after we drink all of this,” said Ava.
Ultimately, they decided it’s best to “stop staining and smile on.” Everybody will be fine if they brush their teeth and drink a little bit less of everything but water.
“We see all those videos where teeth are very gross,” started Sydney.
“And then you see all these people and their teeth, some are very white and some are yellow, I wondered how they get it (like that),” continued Ava.
It was difficult to find kids at their own tables during viewing hours. Once the judging period concluded, there were too many things to see in the hall to sit still: magnetic slime, regular slime, oil spill cleanups, mold and petri dish-grown bacteria, are mood rings just temperature rings?
Things like that.
The answer to that final question about mood rings is yes, they only measure your temperature, concluded Emma Auger — she’s Grade 5 at Pembina North Community School.
Dunstable School principal Tammy Tkachuk — she’s been at the helm of the fair for a couple of years — said that’s exactly what makes this fair interesting: kids look for real-life examples for their own projects, and then get inspired at the hall by what other people have done.
That’s how good science is born, and good scientists stay on track: they spot things around them that they’re curious about, test them out within parameters they’ve researched, and come up with data-based conclusions.
For the future, they think of ways they could have modified their results, or other factors that could impact the conclusions they drew based on the set of data.
Gracie and Leah said they could change the texture of the paper they used, or let the dogs choose more than three times.
The numbers might look like they’re faltering from previous years, when over 100 kids were there, but since this is the realm of good science, the data should be examined.
Usually, the local fair happens ahead of the larger one in Edmonton; those who placed first in their categories or got a special award would go on to the city. This year, Edmonton had theirs before the Westlock event took place.
One more thing: “The big difference happened when we went from every school having their own fair and then coming to us to more (of a) voluntary thing,” said Tkachuk, but that also means that as she said, the more enthusiastic, science-savvy ones are more likely to attend.
Despite the numbers seemingly dropping, it’s not a large margin at all. Since the projects are voluntarily made and presented, and there’s no promise of an extra trip at the end of this fair, it’s enough to say that interest in science is not, in fact, suffering.
There was also a clue for future participation embedded in this fair: “We had quite a few younger students. Sometimes we don’t have very many kids in Grades 1-3 but we had some amazing projects from (them) which makes me really excited to see what they’re going to do next year, and the year after.”
Andreea Resmerita, TownandCountryToday.com
Follow me on Twitter @andreea_res
