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SIERRA VISTA — On Wednesday night, several hundred Cochise and Santa Cruz County teenagers waited by the telephone — and not for the reasons you might expect.
From Elgin to Elfrida, and Benson to Bisbee, they were hoping for the call to invite them to tonight’s awards ceremony for the Sulphur Valley Springs Electric Cooperative’s YES Fair.
Held at The Palms, prizes will be awarded at the fifth and sixth grade levels, seventh and eighth grade levels, and nine through 12 — and the announcement of two grand prizes to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Albuquerque, N.M.
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All told, $11,000 will be distributed, including checks to the teacher/advisers of winning students.
Results were expected to be posted on the SSVEC Web site by this morning.
“I’m really impressed,” said Ross Lampert, vice president of the Air Force Assocation, Cochise chapter. “Some of these kids worked very hard. There are some creative and thoughtul experiments here.”
Lampert, a retired lieutenant colonel, joined other judges on Wednesday afternoon. He was in search of projects to honor with four special awards from the Air Force.
As Lampert strolled the aisles and carefully studied the seventh and eighth grade projects, the atmosphere was far more tense around the corner in the 9-12 “senior division.” High school students were required to stay with their exhibits and be available for potentially two rounds of judges’ interviews, challenges, and discussion of their displays.
The 37 projects ran the scientific gamut from “Bouncing Polymers” to “Effects of Tip Weight on Arrow Ballistics” to “E.coli on the Rocks” to “Bathroom Bacteria.”
Daniel Ellsworth, a Buena High senior and grand prize winner from last year, was back with “Oz” — demonstrating how homes could be equipped with portable panels that would block radiation and create their own localized ozone layer.
Lioba Macht, a junior from Bisbee High School and exchange student from Germany, proved quite substantially that commercial room air fresheners affect the growth and color of plants. The idea for the botany project came about “because I can’t open the window in my room because the dust blows in,” she said. “And no one believes me when I say the room freshener gives me a headache,” she added. “But I didn’t think I should test this out on people.”
The fair’s 58 volunteer judges evaluate specific grade levels and come from the military and Army contracting firms, while some are retirees. The largest group is educators at various levels, including college. This year, in addition to the 37 high school projects, there were 127 entries from seventh and eighth graders and 141 from fifth- and sixth-graders.
“A few of our judges have been with us for all 26 years of the fair,” said SSVEC spokesman Wayne Crane, “from when it started out as one little shelf in our office.”
The event has grown so popular that coordinator David Bane and his committee have made an effort to encourage schools to have their own science fairs first, permitting the “best of the best” to raise the bar, as it were, for Yes Fair entries. “Some of these seventh- and eighth-grade projects could be moved over to the senior division and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference,” Crane said. “Judges are looking for the interesting, personal experiments that have an application in the real world. And they really care about the research and the documentation.”
Gilbert Allen, also from Bisbee, was happy to talk about his “Manure” project, which attempted to determine if fertilizers from different animals would affect the growth of a particular type of tomato. “Science is one of my favorite subjects,” said the high school senior.
In between several intense discussions with different judges, Buena’s Ellsworth recalled last year’s trip to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Indianapolis. “It was fun,” he said. “A student party for 1,400 kids and Ph.D.’s from all over the world.”
Fair opens at 8 a.m. today
Co-sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronic Association, the YES Fair is open to the public beginning at 8 a.m. today. The Palms is located at 255 W. Wilcox Drive in Sierra Vista.
CINDY SKALSKY can be reached at 515-4611 or by e-mail at cindy.skalsky@svherald.com.
nicole ray wrote on Jun 21, 2009 3:35 PM: