Science projects are great opportunities to build real-life research experience. And once students experience science fair success, they have opportunities to travel. Along the way, they make friends whom they often see from one competition to the next.

At the 2007 ISEF in Albuquerque, N.M., for example, 25 of the 1,500-plus participants were once finalists in the Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge (DCYSC), which is held in Washington, D.C. every fall.

Nick Ekladyous (far left) and teammates explored Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity at the DCYSC in 2004.

Richard Cho, DCYSC

At DCYSC, 40 of the nation’s top middle school science students work in groups to tackle challenges with a scientific theme. They are judged on their problem-solving, teamwork, and communication skills.

Their experiences at DCYSC, say these 25 science fair veterans, have served them well at ISEF.

“DCYSC helped us learn how to present our ideas to adults,” says Sasha Rohret, a 17-year-old senior at the Keystone School in San Antonio, Texas.

At ISEF 2007, Sasha presented the results of her ongoing research on the possibility of growing plants on Mars.

Emily Sohn

“I [also] got a lot of experience with the scientific method,” she says. “I had to work in groups with people I didn’t know.”

From science fairs to Mars

At this year’s ISEF, Sasha presented the results of her 4-year (and counting) study that explores the possibility of growing plants on Mars. She got the idea after seeing a television program about the Mars rovers, robotic spacecraft that landed on the Red Planet in 2004. Sasha was an eighth-grader at the time.

The program said that if people ever wanted to live on Mars, they would need to learn how to grow food there. The idea captured Sasha’s imagination, and her work on the subject has already earned her one trip to DCYSC and three trips to ISEF.

For her experiments, Sasha has grown plants in volcanic soil that resembles Martian soil. She puts the plants in airtight, gas-filled tanks that mimic the atmospheres of Mars and Earth.

Over 4 years of research, Sasha has meticulously measured how plants might grow on the Red Planet under a variety of soil and atmospheric conditions.

Courtesy of Sasha Rohret

Over the years, she has discovered that the relatively large proportion of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the Martian atmosphere is the biggest obstacle to growing plants there. The gas makes up about 97 percent of Mars’ atmosphere, compared with less than 0.05 percent of the atmosphere on Earth.

Mars’ atmosphere is also thinner than Earth’s, so more of the sun’s radiation hits Mars’ surface, Sasha says. Extra radiation is tough on plants.

“You would have to alter the Martian atmosphere quite a bit to grow plants on Mars,” Sasha concludes. However, she remains optimistic. “I think it will happen.”

Some day, Sasha would like to be an astrophysicist—an astronomer who specializes in the physical and chemical properties of objects in outer space. And if she ever gets an invitation to explore Mars, she’ll leap at the chance.

“I would go if I had the opportunity,” she says. “I think it would be pretty fun.”

Science students to the rescue

The science fair veterans in Albuquerque tackled a diverse range of subjects, from botany to mechanical engineering. One thing that many of the projects had in common was their attempt to solve important, real-world problems.

“I always try to do a project every year that will impact society in a positive way,” says Nicholas Ekladyous, 15, now a senior at Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

At ISEF this year, Nick stood with a crash-test dummy and presented his work on van safety.

Emily Sohn

For his eighth- and ninth-grade projects, Nick aimed to make 15-passenger vans safer. He built a scaled-down model of such a van and then designed a computer program to predict when a real van would be most likely to roll over. The 2-year project earned him a trip to DCYSC in 2004 and to ISEF in 2005.

As a sophomore in 2006, Nick attended ISEF with his design of a safer material for padding playground floors. Finally, for ISEF 2007, Nick used computer models to develop a design for car hoods that would be less harmful to pedestrians struck in traffic accidents.

“If pedestrians are hit, the chances of death are very high,” Nick says.

For his 2007 ISEF project, Nick created a computer program to model how badly pedestrians would be injured when struck by cars with a variety of hood designs.

Emily Sohn

According to Nick, his hood would reduce death and injury to pedestrians by as much as 70 percent compared with current models. He has filed for a patent on his design.

Lessons learned

The exhibition hall at ISEF can be an intimidating place, filled with row after row of projects with hard-to-pronounce names. Still, the DCYSC veterans seemed to be enjoying the scene—sometimes to their surprise.

In the exhibit hall at ISEF each year, more than 1,500 students display the results of work that touches on nearly every topic in science.

Intel

“DCYSC was the first time I got to go to a national competition,” says 16-year-old Lucia Mocz, who conducted her first science fair project in middle school only because it was a class requirement. Lucia is now a junior at Mililani High School in Hawaii.

“That was a major force in getting me interested in science,” she says. “I did not like science before, but [DCYSC] was just so fun. Now, I want to major in math.”

Designing projects for science fairs helped 16-year-old Lucia discover a love of math.

Emily Sohn

Want to experience the science fair scene? First, find a topic you’re passionate about, suggest the DCYSC/ISEF veterans. Then, let the investigations begin.

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Word Find: Fair Dreams

“I saw the camera focus on me, and I stood up,” says Nolan, who will be a sophomore this fall at Waiakea High School in Hilo, Hawaii. “After that,” he recalls, “It was really a dreamlike sequence.”

Nolan Kamitaki wins the grand prize award at DCYSC in 2006. Surrounding him are (from left) Judith McHale, president & CEO, Discovery Channel; Anthony Fauci, director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH; John Hendricks, founder and

Courtesy of Discovery Channel

Nolan’s previous success at science fairs made him eligible to compete in the 2006 DCYSC. And this year, his most recent work landed him at a second prestigious competition—the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).

Toxic metal in Hawaii

Nolan’s road to science fair stardom began when he was in seventh grade. He had read some newspaper articles about high levels of arsenic—a toxic metal—found in Hilo’s soil. Arsenic can damage the skin, lungs, heart, and other organs. It can interfere with kids’ ability to learn. In high enough quantities, it can be fatal.

Small amounts of arsenic occur naturally in the Earth, but larger, more dangerous amounts can arise from the metal’s use in industry. Particles of arsenic can float in the air as dust. And if arsenic gets into the soil, it can contaminate drinking water and crops. Nolan wondered whether the arsenic in Hilo’s soil could be getting into kids’ bodies too.

The discovery of arsenic in Hilo’s soil made Nolan wonder whether the toxic metal lurked in the ground near his school, Waiakea Intermediate School, pictured here.

Nolan Kamitaki

Nolan collected samples of soil from the grounds of several schools near his home. He also collected hair samples from students who attended those schools. If the kids had been exposed to high levels of arsenic, the toxic material would show up in their hair. He analyzed the soil and hair samples to determine their arsenic levels.

His analyses showed that the soil was highly polluted with the metal but that there wasn’t enough of it in the students’ hair to put them at risk of arsenic poisoning.

Nolan looked for traces of arsenic in soil samples from his area.

Courtesy of Nolan Kamitaki

“It’s a controversial issue,” Nolan says. “It surprises people who think of Hilo as such a paradise. It’s hard to believe there could be a [pollution] problem like this.”

Discovery Channel challenges

Nolan’s work earned him a spot at last fall’s DCYSC. For this annual event, the Discovery Channel brings together 40 middle school science fair winners to compete for scholarship money, prizes, and the title of “America’s Top Young Scientist of the Year.” Students are given a number of scientific challenges and are judged on their problem-solving skills as well as their ability to work as part of a team.

Last year’s DCYSC took place at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md. Participants worked with NIH scientists on real problems, all with a medical theme.

Nolan’s favorite challenge of the competition was called “Avian Flu: Something in the Air.” For that 90-minute activity, each member of his five-person team took on a role, such as doctor, town mayor, or virus specialist. Nolan’s role was to be the team’s epidemiologist—a doctor who studies disease patterns.

The team’s first job was to diagnose a case of avian flu. (To do this, the students received information about a fake patient.) The team then had to devise a treatment plan. The group’s third task was to hold a press conference to tell community members about the outbreak and explain what they should do to prevent it from spreading. The work had to be done within a tight time frame.

In a lab at the National Institutes of Health, student scientists Jack Grundy (left) and Erin Edwards tackled a make-believe avian-flu epidemic while participating in the 2006 Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge.

Photo by Bill Fitzpatrick

“I got to predict how many people survived and how many became infected,” Nolan says. “It was the most exciting challenge to me because it is relevant today.”

Following up on flu

That 90-minute challenge inspired Nolan to study avian flu, also called H5N1, for his next science fair project.

Avian flu has been killing birds around the world. The virus that causes the flu has recently mutated, or changed, into a form that allows people to catch it from birds. Like birds, people can get sick and even die from the illness. And while the virus can’t yet spread from person to person, scientists fear that if it mutates again, it will gain the ability to do so. That could cause a worldwide epidemic.

The disease spreads rapidly, Nolan says. So, in the case of an epidemic, there wouldn’t be enough time to make enough vaccine to protect everyone. Governments would have to decide who should get the limited supply of vaccine. For his science fair project this year, Nolan decided to try to find the best strategy to minimize the extent of an avian-flu epidemic by vaccinating the people who would be most responsible for its spread.

“It’s an important problem right now,” he says. “Scientists have to figure out how to deal with the threat of disease. As soon as they know, they have to already have a plan of action.”

Virtual virus

Nolan’s first job was to design a computer program that simulated how avian flu would spread through a city. He spent 4 months researching and writing the program. First, he collected data about H5N1 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), medical journals, and other sources. Then, he divided the population into three groups by age: youths, adults, and the elderly.

His simulations considered how long people of each age group tend to interact with other people, how long they are contagious before showing symptoms of the flu, and how likely they are to die from it, among other factors.

With his computer program, Nolan considered the many ways in which an infectious disease can spread.

Courtesy of Nolan Kamitaki

To consider each possible scenario, Nolan ran the computer program 18,000 times. Analyzing the data took about a month. In the end, he found that the best way to stop an epidemic in its tracks would be to vaccinate kids and teenagers. Compared with adults, kids interact with a greater number of people each day, he says, so they tend to spread diseases more quickly.

The project taught Nolan a lot about computer science. “You have to go through a lot of revisions to get something you can work with,” he says.

You win some . . .

Nolan’s work on avian flu earned him a spot at this year’s ISEF, which took place in Albuquerque, N.M. in May. During the competition, more than 1,500 high school students from 51 countries competed for $4 million in scholarship money, computers, trips, and other prizes.

Nolan presented his work on avian flu at the 2007 International Science and Engineering Fair in Albuquerque, N.M.

Emily Sohn

Although he didn’t win a prize this year, Nolan is more motivated than ever. “It was thrilling to be able to attend a large science fair and meet so many talented students,” he says. “The opportunity to learn about many really great scientific ideas was a valuable experience.”

Next year, he plans to write a more advanced program that analyzes how avian flu could spread between cities and through other means. Merging medicine with computer science, he says, will be the key to preparing for future disease outbreaks.

“The interdisciplinary approach to science fascinates me,” Nolan says. “Science can’t be completed by one person or one team alone. The connections between groups are what will bring science together.”

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“If we do nothing,” says Taylor Jones, the freckle-faced mayor of Anytown, “most likely, 70 percent of people in this town will die.”

In a lab at the National Institutes of Health, student scientists Jack Grundy (left) and Erin Edwards tackle a make-believe avian-flu epidemic at this year’s Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge.

Photo by Bill Fitzpatrick

While Jones and an epidemiologist use computer models to assess the town’s risk, a virologist scans mucus samples to prepare a diagnosis. The patient, a 33-year-old named Joe Plastic, lies in a hospital isolation unit. He’s struggling to breathe.

“He’s starting to die,” says Dr. Jayne Thompson.

The virologist, Kushal Naik, has more bad news.

“Joe is positive for avian flu, but that’s not the worst part,” Naik says. “We have nine specimens from other hospitals that are also positive. It’s spreading.”

Jayne Thompson and William Pete take a mucus sample from Joe Plastic’s nose.

Emily Sohn

This crisis ends quickly, however, mainly because it’s fictional. The team, ranging in age from 11 to 15, is tackling one of six 90-minute challenges at this year’s Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge (DCYSC).

Each fall, DCYSC brings 40 middle school science fair champs to Washington, D.C., to compete for more than $100,000 in scholarships, prizes, and the honor of being named “America’s Top Young Scientist of the Year.” Winners must combine problem solving with quick thinking, teamwork, and the ability to explain complicated ideas clearly.

Gut navigation

This year’s team competition, which had a medical theme, took place at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md. Most challenges involved real-world medical problems. And cutting-edge NIH researchers were there to help.

“We try to deal with issues in the news,” says Steve “Jake” Jacobs, head DCYSC judge. “NIH provided us with an opportunity available nowhere else on the planet.”

NIH radiologist Ronald Summers explains the basics of reading a computerized tomography scan.

Emily Sohn

NIH researcher Ronald Summers, for example, studies virtual colonoscopy, a new way to screen for cancer of the colon (or large intestine). The technique combines X-ray–like computerized tomography (CT) scans with computer software to create three-dimensional videos of the inside of the colon. Doctors can then check the images for polyps, mushroomlike growths that can become cancerous.

The new diagnostic method is more comfortable for patients than the standard procedure. In that procedure, “you insert the scope into the patient’s bottom and thread it through,” Summers says. “A light and digital camera show you everything.”

To compare the standard and new methods, students tried out each one. To perform a mock CT exam, they navigated through virtual images of five colons to spot the polyps in each. For the standard method, students threaded a 63-inch-long scope through a plastic model of a human colon. A screen displayed what was inside.

Steering the probe through the twists and folds of the colon was difficult. “I have no idea what I’m looking at,” Otana Jakpor, 12, admitted at one point. Teammate Jack Grundy, 13, punctured the fake patient’s intestinal wall by mistake.

Nolan Kamitaki and Anthony Hennig separate zebrafish embryos in a petri dish in the NIH labs.

Photo by Bill Fitzpatrick

Before the challenge ended, the colon explorers regrouped with teammates who had been injecting glowing proteins into see-through fish embryos. Together, the team needed to make a 3-minute, kid-to-kid video about new ways to look inside organisms.

Lunchtime

Downstairs, a different group of finalists battled another public health crisis: obesity (see “Packing Fat”).

First, the team had to assemble a 500-calorie lunch from a selection of foods whose nutritional labels were hidden. The team picked a chicken wrap, a banana, carrot sticks, Fig Newtons, and milk.

The students were dismayed to learn that they’d overshot their mark: The lunch they’d assembled packed a walloping 885 calories.

Jayleen McAlpine demonstrates on a treadmill how much effort it takes to burn calories while her teammates look on.

Photo by Bill Fitzpatrick

Next, they used a chart, a treadmill, and their mathematics skills to figure out how much exercise it would take for a 125-pound person to burn off such a lunch.

After arguing about who would actually do so much exercise, they settled on four choices: an hour of basketball, an hour of tennis, 30 minutes of walking, and 30 minutes of lawn mowing.

Finally, the team created a podcast about energy balance and weight control.

“If people realized they had to do all that [exercise to burn off the calories in] a cookie, they might change their minds,” Joseph Church, 14, said.

Collin McAliley, 13, was unconvinced. “It’s such a good cookie, though,” he said.

Grand prize

DCYSC involved more than challenges, dinners, meeting people, and having fun. On the final morning, the finalists visited an elementary school in Washington, D.C. They fielded questions, demonstrated science experiments, and helped kids with their science projects.

DCYSC competitor Joel Tinker demonstrates an experiment to two students at a Washington, D.C., school.

Photo by Bill Fitzpatrick

At the awards ceremony, the grand prize, a $20,000 scholarship, went to Nolan Kamitaki, 14, of Waiakea Intermediate School in Hilo, Hawaii.

Jacob “Pi” Hurwitz, 14, of Robert Frost Middle School in Rockville, Md., received a $10,000 scholarship. His nickname reflects his ability to recite 320 decimal digits of the number pi.

Amy David, 15, of Pinedale Middle School in Wyo., won third place and a $5,000 scholarship.

“One reason we’re happy to have such bright, energetic people getting into science is that you are the next generation of leaders,” NIH’s Anthony Fauci told the finalists. “You are choosing a life of discovery and a probing of the unknown. It’s a most unusual and extraordinary life.”

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Word Find: Detecting Disease

Kelydra, 17, lives in Parkersburg, W.Va. Nearby, a DuPont chemical plant makes a variety of products, including the nonstick material Teflon. Tiny amounts of an ingredient used to produce Teflon have ended up in the area’s water supply. Lab tests have shown that this chemical, known as APFO, is toxic and may cause cancer in animals.

Kelydra Welcker collects a water sample from the Ohio River.

Courtesy of Kelydra Welcker

The water that comes out of Parkersburg’s faucets looks and tastes fine, but many people worry that drinking it will hurt their health.

Instead of just worrying about the problem, Kelydra took action. She invented a way to detect and help remove APFO from drinking water. And she has applied for a patent on the process.

This science project earned Kelydra a trip to the 2006 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), held last May in Indianapolis. About 1,500 students from around the world competed for prizes at the fair.

Kelydra at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Indianapolis.

V. Miller

“I want to clean the environment,” says Kelydra, a junior at Parkersburg South High School. “I want to make the world a better place for our children.”

Mosquito studies

Kelydra began her research on toxic substances when she was in seventh grade. She wondered how pollution might affect animals in her area’s streams and rivers.

Scientists had already learned that chemicals called steroids can alter fish behavior. As part of her seventh-grade science project, Kelydra looked for similar effects on mosquitoes.

A female mosquito.

Courtesy of Kelydra Welcker

She focused on the effects of estrogen and several other steroids that are known as endocrine disruptors. The body’s endocrine system produces chemical substances called hormones. Hormones regulate growth, the production of eggs in females, and other processes essential for life.

As a result of her early research, Kelydra discovered that endocrine disruptors affect the rates at which mosquitoes hatch and that they also change the buzzing sounds that mosquitoes make when they beat their wings. That discovery earned her a spot as a finalist in the 2002 Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge (DCYSC).

At DCYSC, Kelydra learned that scientists have to speak clearly if they want to persuade people that their research is significant.

“It’s important to be able to talk in sound bites, short and sweet,” she says, “so that people can put the message in their heads.”

Kelydra analyzes the sounds of a mosquito’s beating wings.

Courtesy of Kelydra Welcker

Another research effort involving mosquitoes brought Kelydra to the 2005 ISEF in Phoenix, Ariz. At this event, she won a $500 prize for the best use of photography in a science project.

Chemical effects

This year, Kelydra focused on APFO, the chemical that has been worrisome to her neighbors in Parkersburg.

APFO is short for ammonium perfluorooctanoate, which is also sometimes called PFOA or C8. Each molecule of APFO consists of 8 carbon atoms, 15 fluorine atoms, 2 oxygen atoms, 3 hydrogen atoms, and 1 nitrogen atom.

APFO is a building block in the production of Teflon. It’s also used in the manufacture of water- and stain-resistant clothing, fire-fighting foams, and other products. And it can form from substances used to make grease-resistant fast-food packaging, candy wrappers, and pizza-box liners.

The chemical has shown up not only in drinking water but also in the bodies of people and animals, including those living in the Parkersburg area.

To illustrate the potential dangers of APFO, Kelydra turned again to mosquitoes. She bred some 2,400 mosquitoes in her kitchen and timed their life cycles.

Mosquito pupae just after hatching.

Courtesy of Kelydra Welcker

Her results suggested that when APFO is in the environment, mosquitoes hatch sooner than they do normally. So, more generations of mosquitoes end up living and breeding each season. With more mosquitoes around, diseases that they carry, such as West Nile virus, can spread more quickly, Kelydra says.

Water treatment

To help her neighbors and to improve the environment, Kelydra wanted to find a way to detect and measure APFO in water. She sought to create a test that was simple and inexpensive so that people could analyze water coming out of their home taps.

Kelydra knew that when you shake water contaminated with relatively high amounts of APFO, the water gets foamy. The more APFO in the water, the foamier it gets. When APFO gets into drinking water, however, the concentrations are usually too low to create foam.

A higher concentration of APFO in water increases the height of foam created when the sample is shaken.

Courtesy of Kelydra Welcker

To increase the concentration of APFO in a water sample to levels at which it could be detected by foaming, Kelydra used an apparatus called an electrolytic cell. One of the cell’s electrodes worked like an electrically charged wand. It attracted APFO. This meant that the amount of APFO in the water decreased.

At the same time, she could carefully rinse off the wand, creating a new solution with a higher concentration of APFO. When she shook the new solution, foam formed.

This apparatus, consisting of a dry cell and two electrodes, allowed Kelydra to remove much of the chemical APFO from contaminated water.

Courtesy of Kelydra Welcker

“It worked like a dream,” Kelydra says.

The technique can do more than detect APFO in water, she says. It might also help people remove the chemical from their water supply.

Next year, Kelydra plans to create a system that will allow people to purify several gallons of water overnight. She’s enthusiastic about the idea. And, on the basis of her experiences so far, she’s confident that it will work.

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Scientist’s Notebook: Mosquito Research

Word Find: APFO

An Atlantic stingray in an aquarium.

NOAA Photo Library

Several clues had pointed to the possibility that there might be something special about stingray skin. Atlantic stingrays, for example, can deal with microbes in both fresh water and seawater. Sharks, which have a similar type of skin, sometimes nibble on each other but don’t appear to get skin infections.

“I figured something had to be going on,” Ben says. He’s a senior at Sarasota High School in Sarasota, Fla.

Ben presented his research results last month at the 2005 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Phoenix, Ariz. He was one of a record 1,447 high school students from 45 countries who participated in the fair. The young scientists competed for more than $3 million in scholarships, trips, and other prizes.

Slimy stuff

Ben’s project was one of several at ISEF that focused on medical treatments that may be lurking in nature.

An internship at Mote Marine Laboratory near his home inspired Ben’s interest in stingrays. When he started working there 2 years ago, he spent most of his time feeding the aquarium’s sharks, skates, and stingrays.

Eventually, Ben started talking to doctors at the lab. They were conducting medical research on the animals. Among the things that Ben learned was that young trout and salmon produce chemicals that appear to fight cancer.

Ben wondered whether stingrays might also produce chemicals that have a beneficial effect. He had noticed that stingrays rarely get sick, even though they live in an environment full of disease-causing bacteria. He hypothesized that stingrays might have microbe-fighting powers.

Ben Powell and his stingray project.

Emily Sohn

To test his idea, Ben studied mucus that had been scraped off the skin of stingrays living at the aquarium. Through a series of experiments, he discovered several proteins in the mucus that killed bacteria.

This summer, Ben plans to see whether a stingray’s mucous proteins can kill bacteria among a mammal’s blood cells. The ultimate goal would be to copy stingray biology to produce new types of antibiotic medicines for people.

Down with swelling

The idea that stingray mucus could harbor medicine may sound unusual, but pursuing unusual ideas is one mark of a successful researcher, says Kels Phelps. He’s a 17-year-old junior at Butte High School in Butte, Montana.

“In the search for new medicines,” Kels says, “it’s important to cover all the bases.” Like Ben, Kels found a possible source for medicine not in a drugstore, but in nature.

For his project, Kels studied a plant called Yucca glauca, which grows naturally in Montana. The Cheyenne Indians have long used yucca plants as medicine. They believe yucca reduces inflammation, or swelling, just as Advil, Aleve, and other common medications do. Kels was interested in investigating the chemistry behind the Indian claim.

The soapweed yucca plant (Yucca glauca) may have value for reducing swelling after an injury.

Clarence A. Rechenthin. Courtesy of USDA NRCS Texas State Office.

Inflammation is what happens to your ankle after you twist it or to your arm after an allergic reaction to a bee sting. You probably feel pain and notice puffiness in the area of the injury. These signs of injury typically go away after a few days.

Inflammation that doesn’t go away is a major cause of discomfort and complications in a number of serious diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS), arthritis, and Huntington’s disease. In these cases, certain enzymes in the body become overactive and cause excessive inflammation.

Kels began by separating yucca plants into their parts: roots, stems, and flowers. He soaked the parts in a special solution. Then, he extracted promising chemical compounds from the mixtures. His lab experiments showed that these compounds were good at fighting certain types of microbes.

Kels Phelps and his yucca plant project.

Emily Sohn

“I took a step toward proving that yucca has anti-inflammatory properties,” Kels says. His work also showed him how much nature has to offer and how little we know about the world around us.

“As far as the vast number of plants out there and the small amount of research done on them,” he says, “there’s a huge, untapped resource for the next generation of medicines.”

Green tea

Iddoshe Hirpa tapped into this enormous resource for her project on green tea. She had heard about possible health benefits and anticancer properties of the green tea plant (called Camellia sinensis), and she wanted to learn more.

A tea bush.

www.wikipedia.org

“Both my parents are from Africa,” says the 15-year-old 10th grader from duPont Manual Magnet High School in Louisville, Kentucky. “People there don’t have access to all the medicines we have here.”

Iddoshe worked with a chemical called EGCG, which occurs naturally in green tea. Past research had suggested that EGCG fights inflammation.

For her experiments, Iddoshe applied three different concentrations of EGCG to proteins that cause inflammation in the brains of people who suffer from MS. She found that the highest concentration of EGCG she used destroyed the most proteins. This result confirms, she says, that green tea really can reduce inflammation.

Iddoshe Hirpa and her green tea project.

Emily Sohn

Iddoshe was so impressed by her results that she started buying and drinking green tea (which she loads with milk and sugar to make it taste good). Lately, though, she’s fallen out of the habit. “I feel even worse now because I know how good it is for you,” she says. “It’s so embarrassing.”

Even as Iddoshe struggles to make green tea part of her daily routine, she has learned an important lesson from her work.

“It’s a wakeup call to people,” she says. The more we destroy nature, the more we destroy possibilities for healing our own problems. “There are so many things nature could give us.”

Achievements

ISEF projects show just how much students can achieve when they pursue a passion, says Intel’s Craig Barrett. Intel sponsored the competition along with more than 70 other organizations, government agencies, universities, and corporations.

“I have faith this new generation of young scientists and engineers will help cure diseases, protect the environment, and develop breakthrough technologies that will one day change the world,” Barrett says.

If Ben, Kels, and Iddoshe are any indication, the next generation is already partway there.

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Word Find: Nature’s Medicines

More than 1,400 high school students, selected from a pool of millions, came to Portland, Ore., in May to present their science projects and compete for $3 million in scholarship money and other prizes.

Music was the focus of several research projects at ISEF this year. That’s probably not surprising. Music is a popular form of entertainment, and young people pay a lot of attention to it. Rap, rock, folk, jazz, R&B, country, klezmer: Almost everyone has a favorite type.

Classical feel

Classical music is the genre of choice for Richie and Ryan Huynh, 15-year-old identical twins from Champlin, Minn. The freshmen perform with a couple of orchestras. Richie plays the viola. Ryan plays the violin.

It doesn’t matter whether they’re performing or listening to classical music, the twins say. Either way, it makes them feel good.

“It’s a great way to relax and escape,” Ryan says. “Sometimes, we play all night long.”

Richie and Ryan Huynh of Champlin, Minn., did a science project on the effect of listening to classical music on a person’s white blood cell count.

E. Sohn

Classical music makes them feel so good, in fact, that Richie and Ryan wondered if music calms more than just the mind. For their project, they studied how classical music affects the body.

For 6 weeks, 11 volunteers (all 14- and 15-year-olds) listened to classical music for 20 minutes every day. They were told not to do anything else at the same time. Another 10 volunteers carried on with their normal lives—with no classical music. Each week (except for a 1-week vacation break), the school nurse drew blood from all 21 students.

Richie and Ryan then took a drop from each blood sample and smeared it on a slide. On each slide, they counted white blood cells, which are responsible for fighting diseases and germs. The more white blood cells you have, the healthier you are. The counting involved hours of work every day after school.

The results showed that, over the course of the 6-week experiment, the white blood cell count went up and down in both groups. Consistently, however, the students who listened to classical music had higher counts than those who didn’t.

“We did some research and found that people with less stress have higher white blood cell counts,” Ryan says. “We think it has to do with relaxation.”

Just sit back and let Mozart stream in for a little while each day, the brothers say, for a healthier, less stressful life.

Tough rock

Hardcore punk rock or heavy metal probably would not produce the same kind of benefits, another ISEF project suggested. Aggressive music might even hurt you.

That’s what Rebecca Wilder, an 18-year-old senior from Mentor, Ohio, discovered. Her study showed that the kind of music you listen to while you drive could actually affect your chances of getting hurt in a car crash.

Rebecca Wilder of Mentor, Ohio, studied the effects of different types of music on driving ability.

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For her project, Rebecca brought 50 teenage volunteers to an arcade, one at a time. Each student played three rounds on a driving simulation game called “California Speed.” Each round lasted 3 minutes.

During one round, participants used headphones to listen to an aggressive rock song called “Y’all Wanna Single” by Korn. During another round, they listened to a weepy country song called “Don’t Take the Girl” by Tim McGraw. In a third round, they drove in silence. The order of rounds was random. Throughout the experiment, Rebecca counted crashes.

Her results showed that aggressive music might be the most dangerous. Players crashed an average of 10.7 times in 3 minutes while listening to the Korn song. They averaged 6.1 crashes during the sad country song and 8.4 crashes when there was no music.

In reports of other research, Rebecca found evidence that music affects emotion centers in the brain. She speculates that aggressive music makes people aggressive, whereas slow music relaxes them. Driving in silence might encourage people to space out and crash more, she says.

Car accidents killed 6,300 teens between the ages of 15 and 19 in 1998, Rebecca notes. She hopes that her research might inspire Intel, the sponsor of ISEF, to invent a chip that can block certain radio stations on car radios. Keeping young people from listening to the hard stuff when they’re on the road could save lives, she says.

Violin sounds

Saving lives was not on Linden Webster’s mind last summer. She was too busy playing the violin.

Linden Webster of Midlothian, Scotland, plays her violin as part of her physics project studying what factors affect a violin’s quality.

Intel

For 6 weeks, the 17-year-old from Midlothian, Scotland, recorded herself playing notes on four violins in a special, echo-less room called an anechoic chamber. She plugged the recordings into a computer program that turned the sound into graphs. Her goal was to figure out what makes one violin sound better than another violin.

“When I was given the opportunity to complete this project, I suddenly realized I knew nothing about how a violin makes sound,” says Linden, who has been playing since she was 8 years old. “I was embarrassed by how little I knew,” she says.

Linden’s work demonstrated how essential certain vibrations are. When a violin is played, it vibrates. Depending on the violin, vibrations at certain frequencies are much stronger than those at other frequencies. These special frequencies are known as resonances.

High-quality violins have resonances that occur at particular frequencies, Linden says, so they sound better.

Her insights might some day come in handy for violinmakers, Linden says. “Using physics can help us find the best way to make violins and to make them cheaper,” she says.

In the meantime, Linden has a better understanding of how her own violin works. “Now, when something goes wrong,” she says, “I’ll have a better idea why.”

Math beat

Studying music can do more than boost your physics and performance skills, another young violin player found. It can also make you better at math, says Ana Peterlin, a 13-year-old freshman from Fairbanks, Alaska.

Ana Peterlin of Fairbanks, Alaska, holds a CD containing a musical piece that she composed and analyzed mathematically.

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Ana composed a retrograde inversion canon—a piece of music performed simultaneously by two people. One person plays from the first note to the last, while the other plays from the last note to the first, reading the music upside down. She named her composition “Upside Down and Right Side Up!”

Ana then compared her piece to one of Mozart’s retrograde inversion canons, called “Table Music for Two.” Both compositions have the same beat, the same key, and the same range of musical notes. But they differ considerably in the types of notes that are used. Ana’s piece, for example, has many more sixteenth notes.

In the process of analyzing the compositions, Ana discovered some unexpected mathematical patterns in Mozart’s piece. For one thing, he divided his piece into two sections, where one part is longer than the other. It turns out that the ratio of the length of one part to that of the other is a special number called the golden ratio.

Mozart himself was fascinated by numbers. As a kid when he was learning arithmetic, he once covered the walls of all the rooms in his house with figures. When Mozart was 14 and busy with music, he still found time to ask his sister to send him extra math exercises. The margins of one of Mozart’s musical compositions contain calculations of his chances of winning a lottery. He used math in a variety of ways to guide how he composed some of his musical pieces.

Ana was delighted to see her passion for music intersect with her passion for math. “Both help each other,” she says. “Music stimulates your brain, and you use math so much in music. You can’t have one without the other.”

Watch out, math teachers. Singing multiplication tables may be next!

Going Deeper:

Word Find: Project Music

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At this year’s Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Portland, Ore., some of the 1,154 student projects delved into the science of toys and games. In the engineering section, three high school juniors from Utah invented a robot to help solve Rubik’s Cube. Over in physics, a teenager from Indiana investigated how the direction of a volleyball’s spin affects the ball’s flight. Nearby, a young man from Illinois used physics to design a splatter-proof paintball vest.

Intel ISEF finalists (left to right) Patrick D. Loftus, Nathan E. Shepherd, and Zachary Hansen from South Jordan, Utah, examine their Rubik’s Cube robot.

Intel

By dissecting games and sports they love to play, the young researchers found ways to improve their own performance. At the same time, they uncovered some of the science behind their daily activities.

“It’s not just that I’m better at my sport now,” said Kim Sutterer, a 17-year-old volleyball player from Terre Haute, Ind. “It has also helped me understand physics a lot better. When I’m serving, I’m actually thinking about spin.”

Volleyball spin

For her project, Kim used a machine at her high school that automatically serves volleyballs. Depending on the setting, the machine ejects balls with topspin, backspin, or no spin. The launcher can also spit balls out at different angles and different speeds.

Kimberly M. Sutterer of Terre Haute, Ind., explains her project on volleyball spin at this year’s Intel ISEF.

Courtesy of Kim Sutterer

Kim studied the paths followed by volleyballs with topspin, backspin, and no spin, launched at three different angles: 0 degrees, 22.5 degrees, and 45 degrees above horizontal. She videotaped three trials of each spin at each angle, for a total of 27 trials. Using a computer program, she plotted each ball’s trajectory on a graph. Finally, she analyzed the data.

A thrown, struck, or kicked ball deflects the air rushing by it, and the air responds by deflecting the ball. When the ball is spinning, the air tends to follow a longer path on one side than on the other because it’s dragged along by the ball’s turning surface. Air following the longer path travels faster and bends more sharply, producing a dramatic drop in air pressure on that side of the ball. The ball is pushed in the direction of the low-pressure side.

An airplane wing experiences a similar effect. As air travels over the upper curved surface of a wing, the pressure drops. The result is “lift,” which makes the object go up.

“When I looked at the data,” Kim says, “I realized how big an effect lift actually has.” The main difference for a volleyball is that the “lift” can be in any direction, depending on which way the ball is spinning.

In general, a spinning ball will curve in the same direction that the front of the ball turns. If the ball has topspin, for example, it will tend to nosedive as it reaches the end of its path through the air.

Physics has given Kim a strategic advantage as an athlete. In games, the junior sometimes puts topspin on the ball to confuse players on the other team. “It will look like it’s coming right at the player,” Kim says, “and then it will drop down before it gets there.”

When players scoot up closer to compensate, she hits the ball so it has backspin or no spin, sending it over their heads.

Kim is still working on her backspin, and she wants to test sidespins next. In the meantime, she says, her whole team is reaping the rewards of her research.

Paintball splatter

William Ryan Roth has been conducting experiments to help his team out, too. Instead of volleyball, though, the 17-year-old junior plays paintball, a sport in which players shoot at each other with splattering balls of paint. If a ball bursts when it hits you, you’re out. If it doesn’t break, you keep on playing. Ryan’s mission has been to invent a padded vest that keeps paintballs from bursting when they hit.

William Ryan Roth takes aim in front of his project display on paintball impact at the Intel ISEF.

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Ryan plays on a 5-man speedball team. Matches often involve games of Capture the Flag—with a twist. Teams shoot paintballs at each other throughout a game.

Ryan takes his sport seriously. He lives in Taylorville, Ill., but travels as far as Chicago and St. Louis for competitions.

For his science project last year, Ryan found that the thickness of a vest’s padding affects the force of a paintball’s impact. The thicker the padding is, the less force it exerts on the paintball.

This year, Ryan looked at density as well as thickness. He tested a variety of fill materials, including foam, Styrofoam, plastic beads, and fiberfill.

To begin with, Ryan placed a hollow plastic tube vertically over a force probe that measures the impact of a falling object. A special timer recorded how quickly the object dropped. For each trial, he put a sample of material at the bottom of the tube. The density and thickness of the material varied from trial to trial.

“If there isn’t enough material, the paintball will go through, hit your body, and break,” Ryan says. If it’s too dense, the pad will be too hard, and the paint will splatter as well. Similar principles are involved in the design of airbags for cars.

For paintball, there are also practical concerns. The sport requires agility and speed. So, no one would want to wear a thick vest that would be heavy or hot.

In the end, Ryan concluded, the ideal paintball vest would be 11 centimeters thick and be filled with a material that has a density of 0.085 gram per cubic centimeter. He settled on fiberfill.

Ryan is now designing a vest that he can test in the field. At the same time, he’s learned to look at the world with more analytic eyes. You can find physics in things, such as paintball, where you don’t normally expect to, Ryan says.

Scrambled cubes

You also might not expect to find physics in Rubik’s Cube, but that’s exactly what three students from Utah did.

When their physics teacher announced an upcoming science fair, Patrick Loftus, Nathan Shepherd, and Zachary Hansen immediately thought of the Cube. It’s one of their favorite puzzles, and they’re good at unscrambling the puzzle’s small colored cubes by twisting various faces to end up with cubes of the same color on each face.

“We try to go as fast as we can,” says Nathan, 17. “My fastest time is 1 minute, 28 seconds.”

Zachary Hansen unscrambles a Rubik’s Cube.

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The students decided to build a robot that could solve the cube, too. They used plastic building toys to create the overall structure.

The resulting robot has five arms, one for each of five of the six faces of the cube. Each arm is connected to an air-powered actuator that creates suction and grabs onto the face. Then, a motor turns the face left or right.

To make sure each turn is exactly 90 degrees, the young engineers used a photocell sensor system. In front of the sensor sits a metal disc with four tiny holes placed 90 degrees from each other. When the arm has turned 90 degrees, the sensor picks up light shining through the hole, and rotation stops.

Patrick Loftus and Zachary Hansen show their robot for unscrambling Rubik’s Cube.

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The robot can’t yet solve Rubik’s Cube on its own. At this point, the boys still have to send commands through a computer that is connected to the robot. “We look at the cube,” says Patrick, 17, “and we tell it what to do step by step.”

Their ultimate goal is to make a robot that can solve Rubik’s cube by itself. Such a robot would need color sensors, moveable grips, and a more advanced computer program.

In the meantime, their robot still has plenty of lessons to offer, the students say. “We feel our project can connect young minds,” Nathan says.

Indeed, the robot was a big hit at ISEF this year, even though safety concerns kept it from performing for the public. While I was talking to Patrick, Nathan, and Zachary, kids kept stopping by to take pictures and ask for autographs.

Science is more than fun, the students found. It can also make you famous.

Going Deeper:

News Detective: Emily Goes to a Science Fair

Word Find: Game Research

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