Jean McDermott

I.J. Holton Principal

Science fair season is upon us, and I.J. Holton School will be the host site for the grades 3-6 competitive science fair, which we are expanding and renaming STEAM EXPO. Our student scientists and engineers will make their work public on Wednesday, Jan. 29. The community is invited to join us between 1 and 2:45 p.m. for public display of science projects, viewing of engineering challenges, and an awards ceremony.

All fifth- and sixth-grade students are designing a project or experiment that uses the scientific method which is part of their science class coursework. Students who choose to do so will enter their project into the competitive science fair and have the opportunity to advance to district, state and national levels of competition. All fifth- and sixth-grade students will publicly present their completed projects on Jan. 29, but only those in the competitive fair will be judged for qualification for the advanced level fairs. Third- and fourth-grade students also have the opportunity to participate in the competitive science fair and will be joining Holton students on Jan. 29 for judging of their projects.

The scientific method is a way to ask and answer scientific questions by making observations and doing experiments. The steps of the scientific method are: Observation, Research, Hypothesis, Experiment (materials and methods), Data, Conclusions, and Application. It is important for experiments to be a fair test. A “fair test” occurs when you change only one factor (variable) and keep all other conditions the same. While scientists study how nature works, engineers create new things, such as products, websites, environments, and experiences. An added component to the STEAM EXPO for grade five and six students is the engineering challenge. Students will have the opportunity to select a challenge as the base of their project. Students will still be responsible for creating a project to present, but will compete during the expo for their challenge. Projects developed for the challenge will incorporate the engineering design process: Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, and Improve.

Students participating in the engineering challenges are designing and testing their prototypes prior to event day. They have four challenges to select from:

—Straw Rocket Challenge: The objective of the Straw Rocket Challenge is to design, build, and test a straw rocket of student design that will strike a target at any given distance between 3 and 12 meters. Students will use their data/graphs to help predict the settings for the launcher.

—Force Car Challenge: The objective of the Force Car Challenge is to design and build a vehicle to travel the longest distance (within a 1 meter wide track) powered solely by a non-metallic, elastic solid.

—Fettuccini Physics: Truss Bridge Challenge: the objective of this event is to design and build the lightest bridge capable of supporting a given load using uncooked fettuccini spaghetti noodles.

—Mystery Powder – Students will observe and study the chemical behaviors of a mixture that is presented in competition. Using each of five tests, the student must figure out the contents that make up the mixture based on the data collected prior to competition.

I hope you can join us on Jan. 29 and experience the innovation of our budding scientists and engineers.