Kiran Prasad and Arushi Rawat spent almost the entire school year working on their entry in Sunday’s Lambton County Science Fair, but it really came into focus over the past three months.
“Since January it was just literally every weekend for at least a couple hours,” said Rawat, a Grade 10 Northern high school student.
Submitted for judging in the senior division of the earth and environmental sciences category, Rawat said their goal was to address global warming by taking some carbon out of the ocean, leaving room for more carbon from the atmosphere to enter it.
“We developed a prototype that would float in the oceans and be able to perform this reaction,” Prasad, a Grade 12 St. Patrick’s Catholic high school student, said while showing a 3D model of the prototype.
As a panel of judges began moving around the Dante Club Sunday afternoon taking a look at the various entries, the pair was hoping to take top spot in their category.
“Hopefully,” Prasad said. “We’ll see.”
About 45 students from across Sarnia-Lambton participated, event spokesperson Peter Smith said. One of the judges, Dave Machacek, said he was excited to see all of their work.
“Finally back in a building and talking about science,” said Machacek, Lambton College’s technology and trades dean.
One of the first projects he analyzed was Fidget Focus by
Faye Colborne and Kaleigh Edmunds, both Grade 4 Errol Village elementary school students.
“They did a great job,” Machacek said.
The girls said it took a while to finish.
“It was like two months,” Edmunds said.
The 2020 science fair was canceled because of pandemic restrictions while a virtual fair held last year attracted about 35 entries, down from the 94 projects involving 136 students entered in 2019. Smith said having 45 Sunday as the event returned to an in-person format is a good start.
“Really what we’re looking at is just trying to get everybody back together into the kind of fair that we used to have before and then over the next few years we want to build the numbers back up again,” he said.
Judging of the various projects, spread among exhibition, junior, intermediate and senior divisions, started around noon and was expected to last until 4 pm The judges were looking for originality, use of science, understanding and purpose, Smith said.
The winners are expected to be announced Tuesday, he said, with a handful selected to advance to a national fair next month. There is also a slew of prizes up for grabs at the local event.
This was the 48th fair organized by a group of about 10 local residents.
-with files from Paul Morden