The Alaska Science and Engineering Fair took place in Anchorage on March 28, where students from all over the state gathered to present their research and inventions, including several young scientists from Nome’s Anvil City Science Academy (ACSA).
Before the statewide competition, ACSA students presented at the school's annual science fair, held March 12 at Nome-Beltz Middle High School, where their projects were first put to the test.
Hands-on research with Alaska roots
Rows of colorful posters filled the Nome-Beltz Middle High School cafeteria as judges and community members made their way down the aisles.
5th graders Josiah Hanebuth, Ethan Piscoya, and Andrew Bernard sat proudly around beside their project, a posterboard titled ‘The Grip Spray,’ accompanied by a spray bottle filled with a foamy solution made from water, hand sanitizer, honey and glycerin, designed to make basketballs less slippery.
“We choose this project because basketballs are always slippery,” Bernard said. “When they're slippery, they would usually, like, slip out of your hands when you would shoot, and when it's actually grippy, it will help you shoot better.”
The charter school serves grades fifth through eighth and has an enrollment of 60 students. This year's theme was “Alaska,” and sports were a popular topic. But the range of ideas went beyond the court. Others focused on outdoor research and local wildlife.
Fifth grader Kinley Krift spent weeks studying how beaver houses affect ice depths, a study she called ‘The Beaver Effect.’
Sixth graders Gabby Hughes and Kourtney Bogart, and seventh grader Sophia Piscoya, teamed up to collect muskox scat to identify what the animals eat.
“We looked under a microscope at the scat, and we also looked at a bunch of different plants under the microscope,” Hughes said. “Then we compared them to see what we could see in the scat.”
Out of six identified plant types in the muskox scat, Hughes said three plants dominated the samples.
“It’s kind of like this willow branch, this bell heather and this lichen,” Hughes said.
Eighth grader Rosalie Richards’s project, “Surviving the Chill,” tested how different natural insulations performed in the Arctic’s windy, damp conditions.
“I was studying how wind exposure and dampness affect the rate of heat loss through different natural insulating materials,” Richards said. “I chose this topic because our house gets really cold during the winter, so I wanted to see which natural material would be better to use instead of fiberglass.”
Rosalie tested six natural materials, including moss, dog hair and cotton. She said her results were mixed, with materials performing well in some conditions and poorly in others.
“One variation example is that my moss did much worse in wind than all the other materials when dry, but it did the best out of all of them when damp,” Richards said. “So I couldn't really come to a conclusion on which one worked the best.”
ACSA teachers help students bring ideas to life
ACSA’s science fair is a collaborative effort among school staff. In the weeks leading up to the fair, science teacher Keane Richards and writing teacher Rachel Ventress took the lead on the science and writing portions of the projects, while the school's reading teacher, Kastyn Lie, led a workshop for students on presenting their projects to the judges.
This is Richard's fourth year co-coordinating the program, and he said many of this year's projects required weeks or months of field work. For example, the four 5th-grade projects involve beaver habitats.
“One of the students and I worked at length to drop this underwater camera setup that we built ourselves,” Richards said. “I mean, it's like a total engineering-related contraption to literally film things under the water.”
He added that supporting students as they follow their interests is one of the fun parts of the project.
“They were into it, and so that's the cool thing,” Richards said. “You know, if a fifth grader comes up to me and is like, ‘I want to go ahead and drop this underwater camera,’ I'm going to be out there on the ice helping him do it.”
Judges highlight precision and passion
After months of work, the students presented their findings to local and visiting judges. Projects were evaluated on how well they executed the scientific process, the students' presentations to the judges, and the visual displays on their poster boards.
“We're looking closely, and we're holding them to a pretty high standard,” said Judge Claudia Ihl, a biology professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Northwest Campus in Nome. “There are a lot of them that are really good, and then I guess one might have a slightly better graph. One might have a graph that looks good, but maybe they don't have the right units on there.”
A scientist herself, Ihl said there is another goal for the day in addition to accuracy.
“The important thing is to just show them that science is fun,” Ihl said, “And that pursuing a question with curiosity and getting into the details of it takes a lot of work, but it's also a lot of fun and very gratifying in the end.”
Nome students win local and state awards
Following the ACSA science fair, awards were announced. First place went to Silas Ventress for his project ‘Oops, I shook the ground too much! A liquefaction mishap.’ Caleb Rhodes earned second place for his project "Nature's strength: testing the hardness of native wood types." Rosalie Richards took third with ‘Surviving the Chill.’
Science teacher Keane Richards says sending so many students to states was made possible by parent-led fundraising and community donations. The top three projects, along with 17 other ACSA students, advanced to the state competition in Anchorage. Science teacher Keane Richards says sending so many students to states was made possible by parent-led fundraising and community donations. In total, ACSA students earned 10 awards at the Alaska Science and Engineering Fair.
Alaska State Science Fair awards for ACSA Students
1st Place Category Winners:
Rosalie Richards: Physics and Astronomy
Silas Ventress: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Caleb Rhodes: Plant Sciences
Denae Williams and Denali Walrath: Microbiology
Piper Lewis and Aliyah Hensley: Biochemistry
Specialty Awards:
Rosalie Richards: Excellence in Clean Energy
Silas Ventress: The Tony Dunn Memorial Award in Geology
Caleb Rhodes: The Alaska Community Forest Council Award
Ella Hubert, Lexi Blandford, Denae Williams, and Denali Walrath: The Ursel Krumme Excellence in Microbiology Award
Josiah Hanebuth, Ethan Piscoya, and Andrew Bernard: Innovation in Microbiology Award
