Science Fair

Don’t let the title mislead you, it doesn’t mean that I’m am fair judge of science; it means that I was a judge at science fair. I was such a judge on Thursday, January 18th at the Hopkins High School.

Three people judged each science project: two adults “in the industry” and one senior in an advanced science class. It appeared as though every single freshman had to participate, so the quality of each project varied greatly. I signed up to judge the students’ projects in the astronomy/physics division. The coordinator gave each judge around a dozen sheets of paper. Each sheet had a project number on it, telling us who to go judge, and a ‘checklist’ of about twenty items that we would judge the project on. Some of the items on the checklist were creativity, originality, appearance, clarity and accuracy.

After grabbing some of the free food available, I set off to go judge the projects. Each project was displayed on a cardboard triptych and students waited by their project until a judge came by. When I located the first project I needed to judge, there was a girl waiting for me, sitting on the table. When she saw me coming, she jumped up and shook my hand and introduced herself. Get this: she made a hoverboard. I had absolutely no idea how to make a hoverboard, or even what exactly a hoverboard is, but she was more than willing to explain it to me in a prepared spiel. Turns out, she was trying to find out what surface gave the hoverboard the best lift: grass or concrete. I was very impressed. While reading the info on her board, at one point she said to me: “You’re making me nervous.” When I asked he why, she said it was because I wasn’t saying anything. “I’m busy reading your stuff”, I told her. It’s funny to think that I was intimidating to someone.

I also got to judge a project involving the testing of fishing lines (most lines don’t hold up as well as they say they do), the best room for good guitar acoustics, how fast pop-corn dissolves, the best angle to launch an arrow, and what flooring provides the best basketball bounce.

The only other project that impressed me as much as the hoverboard was one involving paint balls. Although not as original as the hoverboard idea, the kid made up for it in thoroughness. He had attached a paintball gun to a table, and then received permission from the city to fire the gun in a local park. He ran a line straight out from the gun some 200 yards, then fired eight different name brands of paint ball ten times each and measured how far they deviated from the line. The goal was to see which brand strayed the least from the line, and, by dividing the distance skewed by the price per ball; he calculated which brands were the best for one’s money. His charts, graphs and diagrams were very thorough and eye-catching. It was very cool.

Next month I get to judge a regional science fair. It will feature the winners of all the school-level contests from all over the metro area.