SV students show off skills at STEM fair
JACKSON TWP — This wasn't your run-of-the-mill science fair featuring cardboard volcanoes and baking soda.
The Seneca Valley Senior High School annual Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Fair on Wednesday had nearly 200 students working together to create the 100 projects.
A look around the gym showed that the students and their projects didn't belong in an ordinary science fair.
One project studied the correlation between cigarette smoke and stunted growth in plants while another studied methods of avoiding antibiotic resistance. Yet another examined the correlation between students' grade point averages and their participation in extra-curricular activities.
None of the students were required to participate. Rather, they voluntarily joined to get a leg up in the world of STEM.
Teacher Kelly Weston, who organized the STEM fair, said it's by design that there aren't any prizes, grading or accolades given out at the end.
“We want to promote science by doing research for the sake of doing research,” Weston said. “Not because there's a chance to win a prize.”
That's not to say some of the projects on display weren't award-worthy.
Seniors Kobie Rankin, Mike Palaski, Tanner Quiggle, Andrew Ligenfelter, Emerson Maloney and Adam Johanknecht combined their talents to create a Rube Goldberg machine, a contraption that relies on a series of chain-reactions to accomplish a task.
Their invention was so successful that it recently won first place in a competition against 34 other teams from the region.
According to Rankin, the six teenagers spent every weekend since October working on their project, which includes more than 100 moving, adjustable parts that complete 30 tasks.
“It's fun and it's challenging,” Rankin said about why the teens became interested in building their machine. “And it's also fun to win.”
On the other side of the gym were seniors Emily Hopkins, Emily Skamia and Shanna Flach, putting the final touches on their project.
They decided to study what would happen to fish eggs if they were placed in an ethanol/water solution, and found that those eggs soon had deformities and other abnormalities because of the ethanol.
Only then could the teenagers make the correlation between their fish eggs and fetal alcohol syndrome in humans.
“It was rewarding to see the results,” Hopkins said. “We found that fish and babies pretty much have the same result.”
Senior Becca Might decided that the STEM fair provided an opportunity to spread the love of science to younger girls who might not be fully immersed in that subject yet.
That's why she spent several months with 11 sixth grade students, helping them build two telescopes that can magnify up to 100 times each.
It was fun enough just to build a telescope, Might said, but it was even better seeing the expressions on the younger girls' faces when the project was completed.
“There aren't a lot of female engineers,” Might said. “I want to try to change that.”
The fair was open to students and teachers during the day, and open to the public Wednesday night.
The fair was sponsored by the nonprofit Seneca Valley Foundation.
