Science fair draws more than 400 projects

Students from 41 schools lined up in rows Tuesday at the Show Me Center to defend their projects during the 60th Southeast Missouri Regional Science Fair.

Pamela Mills, a geoscience instructor at Southeast Missouri State University and veteran grade-school teacher who helps organize the event, said 88 more students participated this time than last year.

"This year, we have 565 students here, which I think is amazing," she said.

Students from 27 junior-high schools, or the B Division, and 14 high schools, or senior division, set up their projects on show boards.

Topics ranged from plant growth to crime-scene investigation to whether red candies taste better than green ones.

Gavin Craig of Perryville, Missouri, discusses his science-fair project Tuesday with judge Tom Howard during the 2016 Southeast Missouri Regional Science Fair at the Show Me Center.Laura Simon

"There is a lot of work that goes into this," Mills said.

Logan Rhodes, an eighth-grader at Delta Junior High, talked about his "Gender Games" presentation.

He and his partner, who wasn't able to attend the fair, decided to see whether gender has anything to do with playing certain kinds of video games.

"We tested to see if men and women play the same category of games," the 14-year-old said.

The students received permission to hand out surveys on a Thursday at the Hastings store in Cape Girardeau, asking participants whether they preferred role-play games, first-person shooter or adventure games.

"We found out that most people play RPG games," he said.

"We actually had the same number (for men and women)."

Rhodes attributed the split to two basic factors: The selection of role-play games is larger, and they're just more fun to play.

For Kennedy Rayburn, a 13-year-old seventh-grader at Trinity Lutheran School in Cape Girardeau, the question of the day was, "Do Plants Need to Sleep?"

To figure out the answer, Rayburn planted seedlings, with half her trays exposed to 24 hours of sunlight and the other half timed for exposure to sunlight every 12 hours -- in other words, 12 hours on and 12 hours off.

Although all the plants grew, the 12-hour seedlings were 1 centimeter taller on average and much greener than their peers.

The 24-hour plants were yellow and shriveled.

"Plants are kind of like humans. They need (sleep) to function properly," she said.

Johanne Karizamimba, a senior at Portageville High School, decided to see whether blade shape would affect the efficiency of a wind turbine.

He started out thinking a blade with a teardrop shape would be fastest, "but I was wrong," he said.

It turns out a circular blade was most efficient, as measured by the amount of electricity the turbine generated when it was outfitted with circular blades.

"So I did three trials (of each kind of blade) and took the average," he said, consoling himself with the fact the teardrop-shaped blades were the second-most efficient kind.

Altogether, Karizamimba tested rectangular, ovular, hexagonal, hourglass-shaped and triangular blades in addition to the other kinds.

He told a judge he decided to do the project because he believes wind power will be a primary source of energy in future.

ljones@semissourian.com

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