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Cullowhee Valley students win at regional science fair
By Justin Goble
Students from Cullowhee Valley School recently won big at the Regional Science Fair and Festival at Western Carolina University.
Nearly 400 students from across Western North Carolina gathered on Feb. 23 and 24, at WCU’s Ramsey Center for two days of extracurricular science activity designed to motivate the students to pursue further studies in the sciences, mathematics and technology.
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Cullowhee Valley School has four winners at the regional Science Fair and Festival, held at Western Carolina University’s Ramsey Center. Participants were, from left, (front) fourth-graders Warren and Duncan Lemay with “How Fast, How Far and How Much Does a Dwarf hamster Run;” (back) fifth-grader Jared Poteet with “Mass and Force;” seventh-grader Colin Martin with “The Effects of Acid Rain on Commonly-grown Vegetables;” and seventh-grade science teacher Amanda Clapp. The Lemays and Poteet were among eight elementary projects chosen to advance, while Martin placed first in the Biological Science category of the sixth-to-eighth-grade division. The winners will attend the N.C. state science fair, which will be held March 25 at Meredith College in Raleigh. – Herald photo by Justin Goble.
Projects from fourth-graders Duncan and Warren Lemay and fifth-grader Jared Poteet were among the eight chosen from the elementary division to advance to state competition.
Seventh-grader Colin Martin was one of the first-place winners from the Feb. 24 middle and high school division contest and will also take part in the state competition.
According to CVS seventh-grade science teacher Amanda Clapp, who helped coordinate the school’s science fair, the students won on the school level before going on to regional competition.
Sixty projects submitted to the CVS event. Eight judges who had volunteered from the community selected the top five elementary projects and the top five middle school projects to send to regionals.
“The science fair at CVS is optional (for the students),” Clapp said. “The kids choose to do it. They are motivated because they like science.”
The Lemay twins’ experiment, “How Fast, How Far and How Much Does a Dwarf Hamster Run,” was inspired by two of their pets.When they found out how much the hamsters ran in a single night, they decided to use their science project to find out if it was true.
“We had been watching dwarf hamsters for a while,” Duncan Lemay said. “We had read somewhere that they run 5 miles in the wild. So we decided to see if it was true.
“We used a regular dwarf hamster cage,” Duncan said.
“We were trying to figure out a way to measure how far they ran, so our dad suggested we use an odometer (on their wheel) and leave them overnight.”
Their results not only supported what they had read but showed that the hamsters could run even farther than expected.
“The hamsters ran 6 miles in one night,” Duncan said. “We were surprised to find out that the male ran less than the female. Now we’re wondering if they can actually power anything by running so much.”
The twins said they were surprised to be chosen for the state competition, since they admit having to rush to get it done on time.
“We didn’t expect to win,” Warren said. “We had to stay up one night until 11 p.m. to get it done.”
For his project, “Mass and Force,” Poteet said he got inspiration from one of his favorite hobbies.
“I like shooting my bow, so I wanted to do something with that,” Poteet said. “So I got some ideas off of the Internet and went from there.”
To conduct his experiment, Poteet shot arrows with different weights at a target. To see how mass affected force, he measured how far each arrow stuck into the target. He said he was surprised by the results.
“I thought the lighter the arrow, the farther it would go into the target because it would be faster,” he said. “I found out that the heavier arrows went in farther because of they had more force. It took more force to get them to go.”
Martin said he had problems with finding a decent project topic at first, but decided he wanted to do something timely. That’s how he came up with “The Effects of Acid Rain on Commonly-grown Vegetables,” he said.
“I was going to do a project on the pH levels of different liquids,” Martin said. “But I thought it wouldn’t mean that much. So I thought of something I could use my notes on that was a national and international issue. So, I decided to do something about acid rain.”
To simulate acid rain, Martin said he mixed vinegar with the water he would give to the plants each day.
“I popped a pH meter in the water I was using,” Martin said. “I added vinegar to it until the water had the pH levels of acid rain.”
From there, he measured how fast the plants took to germinate and grow. Like the rest of the winners, Martin said the results of the experiment held some surprises.
“Actually, the acid rain helped with the germination of the vegetables,” Martin said. “That doesn’t mean they are healthy though.”
Martin said he was a little surprised to win in the Biological Science division, since he thought he could have spent some more time on the project.
“I thought it was a little more rushed than the project I did last year,” Martin said.
Clapp said she was happy with the outcome of the regional event, but wasn’t too surprised. Since CVS puts a strong emphasis on the sciences, she said she expected the projects to do pretty well.
“I was really pleased,”Clapp said. “(Our teachers) have a really good program in the scientific method. They did so well because they put a lot of time into it.”
Though schools are putting a stronger emphasis on science in the classroom, Clapp said experience gained from doing science projects is valuable to the students involved.
“Science is becoming a tested subject in the sate,” Clapp said. “By fifth and eighth grade, students need to have it under their belts. The best way to do that is with hands-on projects.”
The CVS winners will compete at the March 25 state science fair at Meredith college in Raleigh.
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