Washington State Science Fair!

We were fortunate to have 3 students participate in the Washington State Science and Engineering Fair recently. They all won prizes! Congratulations, girls! Way to go! 

Linnea says:

The WA State Science and Engineering Fair (or WSSEF) is a contest of sorts. If you have/had a school fair then the WSSEF is almost exactly like that except that you don’t need a question for your project and you have to be judged. The other thing is that you have to wait for like, 2 hours! I am not exaggerating, and that was only the first session. The second session was a bit longer. There is a chance that you will get judged multiple times. However there are 1^st, 2^nd 3^rd place prizes for all the grades involved (1^st to 12^th).

          I did an experiment with the Stroop Effect. I tested 40 different people, 20 kids and 20 adults. The Stroop Effect is the effect when you try to read the color of a color word. Your brain has two parts; one part figures out colors, the other figures out words. As a result, when you try to do the Stroop test your brain hesitates in naming the color word. In my experiment I made averages for; males, females, adults, kids, left handed, right handed, reading colors and reading words.

Julia says:

        The Washington State Science and Engineering Fair is a science fair where kids in grades 1 through 12 can come and present their projects to judges. It takes place in Bremerton, Washington. 

           There are two judging sessions, the first one is before dinner break and the second one is after dinner break. There are Special award judges that judge for special awards that you can get at the award ceremony on the day after the judging. For each grade there is more than one person who gets first place. The grades 1 through 6 were judged on the first day of the science fair. Grades 7 through 12 were judged on the second day of the science fair.  If you did really well than you could get awarded some money and a certificate.

    

       My experiment was finding the food preference of red wiggler worms. I found out that of the four foods I gave them which were pumpkin, avocado, apple, and banana they liked the pumpkin the best. I made two worm bins and before I put the foods in one of the corners I weighed it on a scale and after the worm bin was done I weighed the food so I could find out how much mass the foods lost. I also checked on the bins every few days to see how many worms were on each food. In both bins the worms ate all the pumpkin flesh and only the super thin pumpkin skins were left. I chose this experiment because I go out to our composter with my dad a lot and in the composter there are tons and tons of red wigglers in there. I thought it was interesting that the worms don’t like to be exposed to light so when we opened the top they dug under the dirt. I hadn’t read much or knew much about the red wigglers and their food preferences so I decided to do an experiment with them.

And Claire says:

       The Washington State Science & Engineering Fair (or WSSEF) is a lot like the Sunnyland Science Fair, except that at the Sunnyland Science Fair you are not present when the judging takes place, while at the WSSEF you do get to present your project to the judges. I liked doing this because my graphs do not explain everything about my project in the way I would like.

       You answer questions and give explanations of the steps that you used to get your conclusion. When the judging has ended they let you know that there’s an award ceremony the next day. I recommend that if you decide to do WSSEF that you get your hotel for 2 nights because the award ceremony runs really late.

       My project was, 'Can Germination Be Increased?' I wanted to know if there was a way to increase the rate at which seeds germinate. To do this I manipulated the seeds. The changes that I made were sun bathing, freezing, water soaking, some I scratched with a file, others I micro-waved. There was also the control group (the group I did nothing to). After doing these manipulations to the seeds I planted them. I found out that the sun bathed seeds, the water soaked seeds and the control, did the best out of the groups. 

Once again, congratulations! 

Who is going to enter the Sunnyland Science Fair next year? What question do you want answered?