A day of snow-covered local mountains, sunset rainbows, and young people showing their skills in science. I was lucky to be able to chair the engineering category at the county science fair this year. There were some impressive projects, and in the evening session open to the community, I photographed a few of the projects. I'm hoping to be invited back next year, and that we'll get more time to listen to the young scientists explain their projects and receive our encouragement and some thoughts on where to go from here.
The projects covered a wide range of talents and interests. Of course there was the always popular explosion themes and model rockets, but also some really impressive microbiology experiments. Alas, no astronomy though.
Little 6 year old Sarah was really enthusiastic about her tests of the strength of different types of thread and ribbon. |
An ingenious idea for propelling a bicycle wheel by heating and altering the balance. |
Rose and Ella made a scale model of Capitola's idea for cleansing water from Soquel Creek using wetlands. Conclusion - it should work! |
...and their teacher will be happy to know they took good care of their very happy eggs |
Among the senior projects, this was one of the best - using molecular biology techniques (polymerase chain reaction) to identify DNA gene sequences that are correlated with Alzheimer's symptoms. |
