Science Fair

Headed up to judge the NYC high school science fair projects. This is my second year judging. It's up at City College, a short hop to Amsterdam and 138th St.. I judged the Environmental Sciences projects. This year, like most, the fair was dominated by the Behavior and Social Sciences projects - 94 in total. The next closest popular category was Medicine and Health Sciences. Poor Earth and Planetary Sciences only had 7 projects - guess Pluto getting downgraded just deflated interest there. Our group had 24 projects.

I judged 8 projects. The best was a senior working on an algea biofuel reactor. He would love to take it solar but wasn't there yet - looking to MIT and Univ. of Georgia for help - smart and entrepreneurial thinker. The worst was a kid basically measuring UVB radiation and trying to connect those levels to 1) Ozone smog levels and 2) the protective effects for smog to prevent melenoma. While he did the measurements for the connection with UVB during expected peak levels during the day and very crudely linked it to very limited ozone data (he didn't even understand the atomspheric chemistry and formation of ozone correctly). Unfortunately he made a HUGE mistake of then looking at one NCI public health table and assumed melanoma was less prevalent in Los Angeles due to smog formation there. He should have skipped that part of his work (public health epidemiology and the bio-statistics were too much to take on for this project). Sadly he got me as a judge since this project basically hit both my undergraduate and graduate levels of study so he was trying to bullshit the wrong person.

Another smart kid was a sophomore playing with a public NASA model to understand the pressure implications on tropospheric and stratospheric wind patterns, humidity, and temperatures. One gal in Queens went out to study wetland and marshland soils using a water quality kit to measure things like DO, pH, etc. and she obviously had a good time working that project in her backyard of Jamaica Bay. Another pair presented survey results on Queens dietary habits related to meat consumption and how this related to carbon and climate implications. Two kids surveyed small cornivores in two different urban parks - Inwood and Riverside - very simple but rewarding project for them using the limited resources they had very well. Other projects were metals in roadside soils and climate change and desertification. Overall, it was just uplifting hearing the excitement and enthusiasm in the voices of the kids and they explained their work.

Got my certificate, water bottle, pen, and free breakfast. Enjoyed the kids a lot. There is real enthusiasm there and it gives me hope for future engineers and scientists. Don't tell, but I would volunteer even it I didn't get an umbrella or water bottle. Shhh.