NEWELL—This year was the 16th annual Science Fair at the Newell School District. On Thursday morning, February 13, students displayed their science fair projects for public viewing at the Middle School gym. Topics for the science projects ranged from “How Vaping Affects the Lungs” to “Clean Soap,” “Cupcake Eggsplosion,” and everything in between.
There were two Grand Champions this year: Lucille Ahart, with her project “Better Brownies,” and Bandyn Severson with his project “Out with a Bang.” Severson studied how temperature affects velocity when shooting guns. He said, “the heated bullets went the fastest.” Ahart explained her project: “I tried to make brownies either cakey or chewy. And so I started out by making a normal chewy batch. Those turned out good. Then when I went to do my cakey ones, I took the electric hand mixer and beat them to get them as tall as possible, but they weren’t baked long enough, so when I took them out of the oven, they flattened down.” She continued to adjust the baking time and recipe of the brownies, and found that regular cakey brownies without baking powder and baked longer stayed the tallest. Her favorite kind of brownie was the regular chewy kind, however!
Awards were given to the top project in each category. The categories included chemistry, plant sciences/botany, animal sciences, behavioral/social sciences, and engineering sciences. The Butte County Conservation Winner this year was Amber Shaykett, with her project “Save the Soil.”
Category winners are listed below.
Animal Science: Taylen Wilen, “Homegrown vs. Store Bought Beef?”
Plant Sciences/Botany: Harper Whitacre, “Glowing Magic Flowers”
Engineering: Dylan Evans, “Make Wind Work for You”
Behavioral/Social Sciences: Braylee Barerra, “Will it Brown?”
Chemistry: Lillian Raisanen, “To Dye or Not to Dye”
Honorable Mention: Ayricka Schulte, “Cupcake Eggsplosion”
Honorable Mention: Diamond Retzlaff, “How Vaping Affects the Lungs”
Honorable Mention: Kyle Kenstler, “Clean Soap”
