Gilroy
– Twelve students, a teacher and a middle school went home with
awards from a county science fair ceremony last week.
Gilroy – Twelve students, a teacher and a middle school went home with awards from a county science fair ceremony last week.
The students scored four first-place prizes, three second-place awards, three honorable mentions and a number of specialty awards with a variety of science projects, ranging in subject from zoology to earth-space sciences. All of the winners except one were from Ascencion Solorsano Middle School and – as the students earned team points for placing in the competition – the school tied for the highest total score to win the Outstanding School Award.
The students entered their poster board presentations into the Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship March 14, spending the day displaying their research and speaking with judges. After more than two weeks of waiting, the students were told of their success and given their awards at a ceremony March 31.
The first place finishers were Colin Gavin, Meghan Carvalho and Spencer McManus and Kevin Lee from Solorsano and Paraas Chand from Brownell Middle School.
Gavin studied “The Effect of Nanoscale Particles on Mammalian Cell Viability,” a project he undertook with the help of Carole Crittenden, a colleague of his father’s at Molecular Devices Corp. – an international supplier of bioanalytical measurement systems. Gavin also won the Lab Coat award for earning the most data points analyzed in a project, the American Society of Microbiology Outstanding Project and the Isabel Stone Award for Best Biological Science Project, which earned him $100 spending money and an all-expense paid trip to the state science fair in Los Angeles.
The project is at the forefront of the field because “there really wasn’t much known on how (nanoscale particles) affect mammals’ cells,” he said.
Carvalho did a project entitled “Will the Autosomal Recessive Mutation of Vestigial Wings Appear in the F1 Generation?,” stimulated to explore the field of genetics because both her parents are doctors. Even though she worked with fruit flies, which have a life cycle of only about one week, the project took a lot of work and time.
“It actually took me from January to right up to Synopsys,” she said.
McManus and Lee collaborated on “Which Type of Wind Turbine is More Efficient and Useful?” The subject fascinates Lee, who also produced reports on wind turbines for science fairs the past two years. This year, the duo built two configurations of wind turbines and measured their efficiency in a controlled environment.
The project is important because alternative energy is “a current issue,” McManus said.
Chand’s project, “Computer-Controlled Remote Control Cars,” was something he produced last year too late for the county’s 2006 competition. This year, he also produced a project on computer-generated music that was too late for the county competition. However, it won the school science fair and he plans on entering it into next year’s competition. Chand was also given highest honors from the fair directors, which guarantees him entry into the Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge and a chance at a $20,000 scholarship.
The five students will take their projects to the California State Science Fair held May 21 and 22. This is a familiar place for Gavin and Carvalho, who participated in the competition last year.
It is also a familiar place for Solorsano science teacher Dawn O’Connor, who teaches all 11 award winners and has taken students to the state three years running. She was recognized by the Synopsys science fair with the Horace Lucich Award for Outstanding Teacher, which came with a $1,000 check.
O’Connor spent vacations and days off in the past three months mentoring the kids in the school lab. When that wasn’t available, she welcomed them into her home.
Her effort is an outgrowth of a positive experience she had when she was young.
“I was the kid who was a little bit hyper,” she said.
When a new teacher introduced her to a way to investigate scientific concepts through a hands-on approach, she was enthralled. Since then, she has had a passion for science, which she now tries to share with her students.
“If you can give them a chance to get them the concepts hands-on, then you can develop the vocab and then you can develop the concepts in class,” she said.
Second place winners included Heather O’Connor – Dawn O’Connor’s daughter – for a physics project, Megan Donahoe with an earth-space sciences project and Lindsay Holt with a biochemistry project.
Sophia Blocher-Sullivan, Erika Otahal and a team of Nick Chang and Brett Newton won honorable mentions. Melissa Gjerde, Marissa Ahmadkhani and the team of Chang and Newton won specialty awards for the their efforts.
All the second place, honorable mention and special award winners attend Solorsano and helped to put them into a tie for first at the end of the fair. However, like the students’ science projects, Solorsano’s success did not occur in a vacuum. It came against stiff competition that makes the achievement all the more impressive, O’Connor said.
“The thing for me is that we’re competing against a lot of private schools, a lot of public schools that have a socioeconomic advantage and we’re winning,” she said.
