STEM Showcase

On Tuesday night, the cafeteria was transformed into a science and technology wonderland. About a dozen booths lined the walls, where hands-on experiments and demos were being carried out. A personal favorite of mine was a banana piano, made possible by a company called MaKey MaKey. From Makey Makey’s homepage:

“Let’s say you load up a piano. Then, instead of using the computer keyboard buttons to play the piano, you can hook up the Makey Makey to something fun, like bananas, and the bananas become your piano keys.”

Pretty cool stuff! You can read more about how it all works here, and even buy your own set for 50 dollars if you’d like.

Sticking with the tech theme, Intel brought a terrifying robot with a barbie doll head that was designed to follow around whoever was in front of it. The robot was outfitted with heat sensors, and would gravitate toward the heat generated by bodies. It sounds like a concept for season five of Black Mirror…

Along the right side of the cafeteria was Basha High School’s “Science Is Fun” club where they had about five different demonstrations going on. The club has the goal of helping kids develop a love for science and put on experiments that 1) looked awesome and 2) were very educational. I’d love to see a club like this one starting up at ACP next year.

Science Fair

The second component to Science Night was the Annual ACP Science Fair where the months of science projects finally pay off for our junior high and high school students. Approximately 40 boards were on display in the library, all of which will be advancing to HISEF. I was absolutely blown away by the experiments, which our students conducted. All of winners are listed at the bottom of the article, but there are a few that stood out to me.

First, my favorite title. Most projects had names that were paragraph-length due to the complexity of the project, but my personal favorite was “No SPF For You! The Effect of Different Durations of UV-C Light on E-coli Bacterial Colonies” by freshman Tej Patel.

Tej took first place in the Microbiology category for his research on how UV light affects E. coli, a project which Chipotle should probably pay attention too.

Both projects in the Robotics and Intelligence Machines category were fascinating, and it’s a shame that only one could win. Second place went to David Hunt for his project on the ability of artificial intelligence to answer different types of questions. AI were much better at answering fact-based questions than those that were emotionally-based, which is good news for those of us who don’t want robots to take over the world. First place was a project conducted by Hadi Shiban on “The Effect of Angle on Knee Joint Tension.” He created a model knee joint out of a tennis ball and some PVC pipe and used a Newton meter to detect the force on the knee at different angles. His project is very important in the field of sports medicine.

Continuing on the sports category, Sharmilla Nimbkar won first place in the Biomedical and Health Science category with her research on how football affects performance on a variety of cognitive tests. She found that while the average test scores were the same for football players and non-players, the football players actually had a much higher proportion of scores that were below the healthy level for a human brain. Watch for Sharmilla to be featured in Concussion 2.

Special thanks to Elaina Ashton, Jennifer McMahon, and ACP’s science department for putting on such a wonderful evening!

Winners List

All of the first-place winners listed below have received automatic bids to AZSEF in late March.

High School

Animal Science: Emma Loop, The effect of household ingredients of bee behavior

Behavioral Science and Social Sciences: Jennifer McMahon, The effect of gender on the susceptibility to optical illusions

Biochemistry: Neha Shakir, The effect of temperature on methane production

Biomedical and Health Sciences: Effects of high school football on verbal and visual memory, motor speed, and reaction time in adolescent high school football players

Cellular and Molecular Biology: Samantha Story, The effect of age and gender on the change in pupil dilation when looking at negative, neutral, and positive images

Chemistry: Leela LeBonheur, The effect on the type of wax on the rate at which a candle burns

Computational Biology and Bioinformatics: Elaina Ashton, The effect of different size bloated stomachs on the electrical resistance of a stretch sensor when measured using an Intel Galileo Arduino board or a digital multimeter

Earth and Environmental Sciences: Devon Baggot, What are you missing?: The effect different intensities of city lights have light pollution

Physical Energy: Sahli Sharma, Do thin film photovoltaic cells made into novel polygons, namely convex and concave forms, produce more voltage than a rigid silicon photovoltaic cell?

Engineering Mechanics: Josh Tenorio and Taman Truong, The effect of the distance between a piezo sensor and center of mechanical stress on the voltage output the piezo returns

Environmental Engineering: Bridge Bach, Erosion prevention – The effect of plant species on amount of soil erosion

Material Science: Tamuyen Truong, The effect of the color of steel on its ability to insulate against infrared heat

Microbiology: Tej Patel, The effect of different durations of UV-C light on E. coli bacteria colonies

Physics and Astronomy: Crystal Van, The effect of height on depth of impact

Plant Sciences: Gerald Bowers, The effect of different types of music on the change in the electrical signal given from plants

Robotics and Intelligent Machines: Hadi Shiban, The effect of angle on knee joint tension

Systems Software: Rakeen Rahman, The effect of the randomness of a shape generator on the distribution of the number of times a set of shapes appear

Junior High

Animal Science: Diya Nath, Effect of household chemicals on brine shrimp stages and death

Cellular and Molecular Biology: Mihira Karnik, What is the ideal time for preparing vegetables such that the nutritional value will be at its highest?

Chemistry: Maria Lopez, The effect of different types of food dye on migration during electrophoresis

Physics and Astronomy: Andrew Kang, The effect on pitch angle on voltage generated by wind turbines

Plant Sciences: Sohani Sandhu, The effect of different powdered metals in chaetomorpha algae on the growth of the algae