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Schools
At Lewisboro Elementary School

Feb 14, 2008

200 participate in school science fair






Variety was the key at Monday’s science fair at Lewisboro Elementary School, where about 200 students showed off the fruits of their labor. The students came from every grade in the school including kindergarten. Almost all had chosen to participate — only the fifth grade students were required to create a project. Some worked alone, others worked in pairs.

The projects ranged through a variety of topics. Some were abstract research projects, studying topics as diverse as astronomy and anatomy. Others were more traditional experiments, ranging from Eric Jurmain’s experiment where he tested the rate at which a banana would rot under different conditions, to Jackie Ricca’s test to determine the best insulator out of several materials.

The last group of projects were more mechanical in nature — students built motors, electrical circuits, and more complicated devices. One pair of fourth grade students, Zury Cutler and Gregory Daniels, even built a “Rube Goldberg device” to turn on a light bulb using a bottle of soda and a Mentos mint.

Second grade student Sarah Richman demonstrates a magnetic field using iron filings for Paul Newcomb. Sarah created the project, titled How Magnets Work, with Alessandra Tucker, also in the second grade.
For the display of the projects, the school gymnasium was taken over and decorated with scientific models — a wooden double-helix model of a DNA strand hung against one wall, a larger-than-life model of a beehive against another. On the stage, a large prism refracted paper strands of “light” from a small sun into its component colors.

Students could also participate in two parent-run stations on either side of the gymnasium. Elisa Duffy ran a series of “touch boxes,” where students could reach in and attempt to identify objects based on feel. On the opposite side of the gymnasium, Elena Dunn showed students how oil and water did not mix, using colored water and oil to create different patterns and colors on wax paper.

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