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Students competing at Ventura County Science Fair
Exercises for the brain
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Photos by Juan Carlo / Star staff Kelly Carinio helps her daughter, Sarah Carinio, 13, an eighth-grader at Mesa Union School, set up her science project "A Rainbow to Remember" for the Ventura County Science Fair. Her project involved connecting memory to colors. Judging begins today at the County Fairgrounds.
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More from Education: K-12Ask Dayle Morris which fast-food fries she prefers, and she'll say In-N-Out's or The Habit's.
The seventh-grader at the Ventura Charter School of Arts and Global Education has more than 80 jars full of moldy fries to prove it.
"When I watched Super Size Me,' I found out how much bad stuff is in fries, and I wanted to find out how much preservatives and additives are in them," said Dayle, 13, referring to the 2004 documentary film about eating for a month at McDonald's. "I thought if I let the fries sit and mold, it would show which is really bad for you: freshly made, or fries that contain additives and preservatives."
Dayle's french fry experiment is just one of hundreds of entries at this year's Ventura County Science Fair. Today, judges will examine the 610 projects prepared by about 725 local students at the Ventura County Fairgrounds, 10 W. Harbor Blvd., Ventura.
This year's theme, "Science in Our Lives," focuses on how science and technology affect and surround us every day, said John Tarkany, county competition coordinator.
On Tuesday, students and their parents lugged huge poster boards and other equipment they used to prove or disprove their hypothesis and set up their exhibits at the fairgrounds. Judging starts about 8:30 a.m. today, and winners will be announced at a ceremony from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday.
The public can view the projects from 4 to 7 p.m. today at the fairgrounds.
The 64 students who win first or second places in various categories will move on to the state competition May 19-20 at the Los Angeles Sports Arena.
Categories in the county competition have expanded this year from 12 to 16 in each of the two divisions.
Sarah Carinio, an eighth-grader at Mesa Union School in Somis, was busy putting up her display Tuesday afternoon with help from her mom, Kelly Carinio, and her grandmother, Virginia Miller.
Sarah's project, "A Rainbow to Remember," looked at whether people would remember pictures of objects better if the objects and poster board were a favorite color.
After surveying 40 people over a few days, her results were close. A total of 17 people remembered items in their favorite color, versus 16 who remembered items in their least favorite color. Seven people remembered the same number of items in their least favorite and favorite colors.
"It's kind of a follow-up of my project last year on auditory and visual learning," Sarah said.
Seventh-grader Eleanor Massar used a sports watch that measures heart rates, her iPod and music from one of her favorite rock bands to conduct her experiment.
"I always like learning about the heart, and I'm really interested in becoming a doctor or veterinarian," said Eleanor, who attends Our Lady of Assumption School in Ventura. "I saw this experiment in a book, and I thought it was cool."
Her father, Pierre, said seeing students like his daughter so excited about the competition proves there are a lot of young, creative minds in schools.
"The application of science for children is a must," he said. "Science is so important, especially for girls, because historically this field has been reserved for mostly men. I got a lot of enjoyment watching her work on her project."
While she had fun conducting her experiment, Eleanor said it's also fun to peek at what other students came up with this year.
"It's like, Wow. That's amazing.' People can think of this stuff and they are only in the seventh grade," Eleanor said.
Dayle's mom, Deborah Meyer-Morris, said her daughter's french fry experiment garnered a call from her credit card company.
After she and her daughter went to seven different fast-food restaurants in a span of about 90 minutes to purchase fries, Meyer-Morris received a call alerting her of possible unauthorized purchases on her card.
"I told them, Thanks for calling, but I was just buying stuff for the science fair,'" Meyer-Morris said.
Dayle said her experiment has also influenced her eating habits. "I stopped eating at McDonald's," she said.
Posted by ewerb on April 23, 2008 at 1:25 p.m. (Suggest removal)
burger king has vegi burgers
in and out does not -- their veggie burgers are just w/o a meat patty (watch out for the onions)
Posted by Face on April 23, 2008 at 3:44 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I hope some of these kids are investigating Global Cooling:
Sunspot activity has not resumed up after hitting an 11-year low in March last year, raising fears that — far from warming — the globe is about to return to an Ice Age, says an Australian-American scientist.
Physicist Phil Chapman, the first native-born Australian to become an astronaut with NASA [he became an American citizen to join up, though he never went into space], said pictures from the U.S. Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) showed no spots on the sun.
He said the world cooled quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7 degrees Centigrade.
"This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930," Chapman wrote in The Australian Wednesday. "If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over."
Posted by heritagevalley on April 23, 2008 at 4:08 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Face99,
I believe that global warming triggers cooler winters and hotter summers. One year of cooler winters doesn't correct the fact that our poles are defrosting, now does it. But, if the global conveyor stalls, which it may be doing, then the ice age will come. We are still a few years from solar max so keep your shoes on and keep watching the glaciers melt. Your ice age will follow.
Posted by Face on April 23, 2008 at 5:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Bury your head in the sand....
Satellite images are showing that the cold spell is helping the sea ice expand in coverage by about 2 million square kilometres, compared to the average winter coverage in the previous three years.
"It's nice to know that the ice is recovering," Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Branch of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, told CBC News on Thursday.
Full article: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/20...
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