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NewsMarch 13, 2002

The best Megan Barnard hoped to get at the annual regional science fair was third place in the senior zoology category. After all, it was her first science fair. So when the senior from South Pemiscot High School in Steele, Mo., heard her name read Tuesday as one of two overall winners she almost didn't believe the announcer...

The best Megan Barnard hoped to get at the annual regional science fair was third place in the senior zoology category. After all, it was her first science fair.

So when the senior from South Pemiscot High School in Steele, Mo., heard her name read Tuesday as one of two overall winners she almost didn't believe the announcer.

"I really didn't expect to do well at all," said Barnard. "I was very surprised. And excited."

More than 80 awards were given at the 46th annual Regional Science Fair.

This year 119 junior high and high school students from 23 schools in Southeast Missouri entered experiments in 12 categories ranging from botany and microbiology to engineering and physics.

The top two overall winners from the Regional Science Fair in the senior high division advance to the International Science and Engineering Fair May 12-18 in Louisville, Ky.

Kendra Riddle, a senior from Sikeston High School, will be making her second trip in two years to the international competition.

Her project, entitled "Sodium Polyacrylate Polymers: A Study of Flood Control and Fire Protection," won eight awards along with the top prize.

But even though Riddle is happy about winning, she's more excited that her results turned out the way she expected.

In layman's terms, Riddle's experiment tested whether a mix of sand and polymers, which she explained as some of the stuff found in diapers, would absorb water in sandbags better than sand by itself.

And the results proved Riddle's theory right.

That's good news for the senior, who is hoping to get a patent on her experiment so she can sell the rights to a manufacturing company in Minnesota.

"I'm trying to market it so I can pay for college," she said. "I got a partial scholarship to the University of Missouri-Rolla for my experiment last year, but this would pay for the rest."

Getting ideas

Coming up with an idea for an experiment is sometimes the hardest part of the project.

Clariecia Stroud, a senior at South Pemiscot, said she didn't have a good idea what she wanted to do so she started searching on the Internet.

"All I knew is I wanted to do something with food," she said. "That's where I found an experiment on tyrosinase enzyme activity."

That means she wanted to know which fruits turn brown the fastest.

The answer, Stroud learned, is bananas. She also discovered the fruits that take the longest to brown are pears.

A lot of students at the fair said they got ideas for their projects from experiments they found on the Internet.

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But for one student, Eagle Ridge Christian School 10th-grader Daniel Ellinghouse, the idea came from home.

Ellinghouse's 2-year-old brother, Gabriel, was born with a heart defect. Before he was 24 hours old he had his first surgery. Since then he has had nine heart catheterizations and one operation, known as the Norwood procedure, done to fix his heart.

The Norwood procedure stops blood that is being returned to the heart by the circulatory system from leaking.

Ellinghouse's experiment outlined the Norwood procedure and tested its effectiveness. His mother helped him gather the information.

"Basically the left side of Gabriel's heart was underdeveloped," Ellinghouse said. "I just wanted to find out if the Norwood procedure works, and it does."

Ellingworth took home an outstanding science fair project award from the U. S. Army.

Joel Kinder, a ninth-grader at Sikeston Junior High School, chose a project that involves model airplanes.

That's because he and his father fly remote control planes on a regular basis and he wanted to find out how they work.

His experiment, "Does the pitch and length of a propeller affect the rpm's created by an engine?" explored the differences in engine speed when compared to the length of a propeller.

"I found out the shorter the length of the propeller, the higher rpm's the engine puts out," he said.

Kinder was among the award winners at the fair, taking home third place in the senior engineering, mathematics, computer science and physics division.

But the biggest award given at the fair was the trip to the international science fair.

Unfortunately for overall winner Barnard, the week of the international competition happens to be during the same week she would graduate from South Pemiscot High School.

So while Barnard left the Show Me Center knowing her experiment on how hormonal and shading factors affect chromatophore dispersion, or coloring, in shrimp was one of the best of the best, she didn't have the award to prove it.

Barnard decided it would be more important to participate in her high school graduation ceremonies than the fair.

And in doing so she forfeited her prize to alternate Chelsea Grigery, a ninth-grader at Sikeston Junior High.

"I really didn't expect to do as well as I did at all, but oh well," Barnard said. "I can't miss my graduation."

Grigery will take her experiment, "Legal tender or criminal evidence," to Louisville with Riddle on May 12.

Next year's Regional Science Fair will be held in Cape Girardeau on March 11.

hkronmueller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 128

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