64th annual Regional Science Fair biggest yet

Glowing pickles. The power of magnets. Electroplating. Iron levels in breakfast cereal. Experiments with water, muscles, plants.

That’s just a tiny sampling from the 64th annual Southeast Missouri Regional Science Fair on Tuesday at the Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau.

This is the biggest year yet for the science fair, said fair director Dr. Chelsea Grigery, a pediatrician at SoutheastHEALTH.

More than 700 students from 43 high schools and junior high schools presented 442 projects, Grigery said.

Grigery participated in the fair herself as a child, and loved it, she said.

Now, she works in the medical field, and it’s important to her to get students excited about it, she said.

In 2010, Grigery said, just more than 400 students participated. Ten years later, that total is more than 700 — a 40% increase, she noted.

That’s due to a lot of hard work to grow the fair, she said.

“A lot of that growth is, teachers who want to come,” Grigery said. They in turn get their students excited about it, she said.

“What’s most important to me is the senior division. It matters so much for college applications, and scholarships,” she said, noting many job openings go unfilled because of a lack of trained workers.

Grigery said three of the senior-level projects will go to the International Science and Engineering Fair, to be held in May in Anaheim, California.

Previously, only two projects were sent each year, Grigery said.

Competing at the international level is an incredible opportunity for students from Southeast Missouri, she added.

Van Buren (Missouri) High School seniors Jerica William and Abigail Truncone’s team project, The Ultimate Brain Game, tested subjects on reading speed based on the color and shape of text, Truncone said.

William said she was surprised by how fast some people could read and recall the information, and how that ability seemed to be affected by age and even gender.

Kaden Ebert, an eighth-grade student at Kennett (Missouri) Middle School, tested whether different fruits could produce electricity — apples, tomatoes, limes, kiwifruit and lemons.

Hadley Wilson and D’Ziyer Leonard, also in eighth grade at Kennett Middle School, teamed up on Taking Action on Diabetes. Leonard, herself a Type 1 diabetic, said she wanted to research the best ways to take care of and control diabetes.

“I already knew about some symptoms, and what it causes,” Leonard said, but both she and Wilson discovered things they didn’t know: diabetics can be more prone to yeast infections, loss of sight, and other issues, she said.

“It helped me learn,” Leonard said.

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Participating schools in the Junior Division: Bernie Middle School, Campbell Junior High, Clarkton Junior High, DeYong Family Homeschool, Immaculate Conception-Jackson, Kelso Elementary School, Kennett Middle High, Leopold, Malden, Meyer Family Homeschool, Meza Family Homeschool, Neelyville, Oak Ridge Middle School, Portageville Middle School, Richland Junior High, South Pemiscot Middle School, Southland, St. Joseph School-Farmington, St. Vincent de Paul-Cape Girardeau, St. Vincent Junior High-Perryville, Trinity Lutheran-Cape Girardeau, Twin Rivers-Fisk and Twin Rivers-Qulin.

Participating schools in the Senior Division: Bernie Senior High School, Cape Girardeau Central High School, Clarkton Senior High School, Clearwater High School, Eagle Ridge Christian Academy, Gihring Family Homeschool, Hayti High School, Jackson High School, Kennett High School, Malden High School, Naylor High School, Oak Ridge High School, Portageville Senior High School, Richland High School, Saxony Lutheran High School, Sikeston High School, South Pemiscot High School, Southland High School, St. Vincent High School-Perryville and Van Buren High School.