Grade 5 students medal at regional science fair
- Details
- Published on Thursday, April 30, 2015
Photo by Kate Jackman-Atkinson
By Kate Jackman-Atkinson
The Neepawa Banner
On March 17, 24 Grade 5 students from Hazel M Kellington School in Neepawa went to Brandon to take part in the Western Manitoba Science Fair. After presenting their projects at the HMK science symposium, these students opted to take their projects to the regional science fair, where they competed against more than 470 projects and 680 participants. Grade 5 teacher Sylvie Tomoniko helped organize the trip.
The projects had to be based on one the units studied as part of the Grade 5 science curriculum. After finding their places and setting up their displays, each student was interviewed about their project by two or more volunteer judges. On April 23, the students received their judges’ comments and were presented with their medals.
Bronze medals were won by Dawson Jakubowski for his project “Contemplating Corrosion”, Liam Major and Dustin Cook for “Panicking Pulses”, Ty Joss and Ethan Lizotte for “Memory Madness”, Arwen Chapman for “What’s Popping” and Bryce Christopherson for “Super Cool Sounds”. Silver medals were won by Sidney Poettcker for “Live, Love, Light” and Cheska Siopongco and Micaela Tamorada for “The Fizzy Egg”.
Receiving honourable mentions were: Macy Wither and Hailey Pasloski for “Taste This!”; Kyla Wahoski and Kiana Gunnarson-Epp for “Germ Invasion”; Shane Kuharski and Brennah McLaughlin for “Sneaky Stealthy Sugars”; Ashton McGhie for “Catapult Chaos”; Chlark Wandag for “Extreme Catapult”, Nathan Babcock and Andreas Holm for “How’s it Growing”; Jacob McCharles and Lennon Carr for “Chaotic Catapults” and Miranda Kasprick and Jenna Bray for “Battle of the Sugars”.
Ty Joss and Ethan Lizotte’s project “Memory Madness” looked at the effect exercise has on memory. The students, who are interested in athletics, wanted to find a project that took this focus into account. The students conducted their experiment at school using other students as test subjects. The experiment took about 20 minutes and then they said it took quite a bit of time to analyze the data and prepare their display.
Cheska Siopongco and Micaela Tamorada’s project “The Fizzy Egg” looked at the decay of an egg in various solutions to simulate the decay of tooth enamel. The girls especially liked getting the judges’ feedback, including learning new information related to their project. Their project was time consuming, as Cheska and Micaela had to record measurements of decay each day as the project progressed.
Sidney Poettcker’s “Live, Love, Light” experiment looked at measuring light. She enjoyed learning about the importance of light to humanity. Doing the experiment took about four hours.
Dawson Jakubowski’s “Contemplating Corrosion” looked at the corrosion of different kinds of metal. Dustin originally planned to do a different project, but this one fit better with Grade 5 curriculum. The project took a little while to gather the different metals and supplies and it took a few more days to prepare the display boards.
Liam Major and Dustin Cook’s “Panicking Pulses” project looked at the effect of aggressive video games on pulse rates. They found that playing more violent video games did result in a higher pulse rate. Liam and Dustin wanted to the study the effect of playing video games and with Mrs. Tomoniko’s help, decided to focus on pulse rates. They spent about two hours conducting their experiment.
Bryce Christopherson’s “Super Cool Sounds” project looked at different sounds. Overall, the medal winners enjoyed doing their experiments and seeing the results. The science fair project also proved to be a good opportunity for students to spend some time with their parents. Many parents played an active role in helping the students source the materials for the projects and some helped with the experiments themselves.
