Taking the offbeat path

For years, Katie DeLaRosa's grandpa told her not to let her dog lick her face. She did anyway, of course, but all the same the warning prompted the 15-year-old Sikeston, Mo., student to consider just what was in her pet's mouth.

The result -- titled "Is a Dog's Mouth Cleaner Than a Human's?" -- was DeLaRosa's entry in the 2005 Southeast Missouri Regional Science Fair.

The answer, according to DeLaRosa's experiment, is yes.

DeLaRosa's project was one of 245 entered in this year's fair, which included students from around 20 local schools divided into junior and senior divisions.

While many students stuck with typical projects like testing paper towel strength and effectiveness of household cleaners, others like DeLaRosa went with more offbeat topics.

Cape Christian School seventh-grader Nikki Graham chose to test the effects of bleach on different hair colors for her project.

Graham bleached samples of blond, brown and red hair to see which bleached the easiest. The idea came from her own interest in becoming a hairstylist.

"I think it's fun," Graham said. "I didn't want to do anything boring."

Other projects included testing chewing gum brands for flavor longevity, determining whether goldfish can be trained and understanding how the rules of probability can help in a game of blackjack.

Laura Atchison, a ninth-grader at Sikeston Junior High, built a magnetic gun by taping three magnets to a plastic ruler and spacing metal ball bearings between the magnets. Energy passed from the magnets to the ball bearings, eventually shooting one of the ball bearings off the end of the ruler.

The project was designed to test how spacing between the ball bearings affects how far the gun will shoot.

Atchison said she got the idea while playing with her brother's magnet set.

cclark@semissourian.com

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