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Fairfax County Regional and Science Fair by Basil White |
The Fairfax County Regional Science and Engineering Fair was held this year at Robinson High School, a facility the size of a small college. I judged entries for the two special awards given Capital PC User Group. CPCUG is giving each awardee $50 savings bond and free memberships. About fifty other groups are here to give their own awards, including the Army , Air Force, the Audubon Society, and the CIA. The CIA sat next to me. All the CIA staffers had their own copy of the New York Times.
An administrator gave instructions as to how to select an exhibit for our awards. Peter Kimmel. the other CPCUG judge, told me that CPCUG expected us to select awards according to the mission of our organization, meaning that we were to stick to the computer science or engineering entries. The county had their own "category judges" whose votes counted for category and overall awards. I admit I was disappointed that I couldn't vote for a general award winner. [Editor's note - CPCUG judges may - and do - serve as category judges.]
The entry awarded the CPCUG prize was a program written by two guys from Lee High School that simulated the effect of sharpshooters and/or hunting licenses on controlling the deer population of any given area of land. The team determined the profile and frequency of deer killed by hunters (six- and seven-year old males) and of sharpshooters (yearling females) and determined the calculations of the effect of each hunter and sharpshooter over every month in a year, taking into account the fertility rate of surviving female deer. The interface was very simple and open-ended, allowing users to build predictions that the designers never intended.
I took a few moments to look at non-computer related projects and found some surprises. Kids are definitely getting smarter. I was also happy to discover that psychology and sociology are now accepted sciences at science fairs. One ninth-grader from Oakton High School researched the difference between memory retention for reading words on flash cards as opposed to hearing them aloud or reading the cards and hearing them aloud. He discovered that reading and listening caused worse retention than just hearing the words, and did follow-up research on the causes of the interference.
The entry that I will never forget was by two ladies from Oakton who learned that foreign countries use a plant hormone called kinetin to retard fruit spoiling, and that this hormone causes mutations. They exposed fruit flies (Drosophilia melanogaster to biology types) to varying levels of kinetin. Every concentration that didn't kill the flies caused physical mutations. The ladies presented graphs of each type of mutation that occurred and "before-after" pictures of each mutation: body, eyes, antennae, etc. I am frightened that, thanks to NAFTA and GATT , other countries can force us to import this mutanogenic fruit against our will? Isn't it MORE frightening that you're hearing about it for the first time from a high school science project? Learn about how kinetin is available in hand lotion at Yahoo! News.