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Grayson Givens | Leo Junior/Senior High School - Leo, INGrade-11 Project Number- Title: Evidence of symbiotic ultraviolet-resistance relationships between bacteria and fungiView Project e-Portfolio--E. coli and A. bisporus, a common bacterium and a common fungus respectively, could hypothetically interact to not only increase the growth rate of both organisms, but work to protect either from environmental harm. This experiment took samples of A. bisporus spores and inoculated them into MEA (malt extract agar) plates, allowing them 4 days to grow. At the same time, E. coli samples were spread onto the same types of plates. In total, four original spore plates were inoculated and two original E. coli plates were inoculated. All plates were incubated and then new plates were formed with the mycelium of two fungi and a single colony from each of the E. coli plates, for four new plates in total. The plates were incubated and then their growth was measured. These plates were created alongside four soil microbe plates, and all plates were then placed in a steady source of ultraviolet light. After the exposure to the light, they were measured again and all samples analyzed under a microscope. The E. coli that interacted with the fungus had noticeably larger colonies than the E. coli that had been inoculated into a sterile MEA. There was much more growth in both the E. coli in the presence of fungus as well as the soil microbes which had been inoculated along with their own indeterminate fungi. Not only this, but the spores that had been in the presence of a bacteria grew much faster than the spores not in the presence of the E. coli. This can be attributed to the fact that the bacteria can digest nutrients for the fungus, helping it reproduce faster. In conclusion, the interaction between certain fungi and bacteria can turn into a symbiotic one, which can help us understand the inner workings of microbiomes and how they can benefit the agricultural system.
Leah Bauer | Towles Intermediate Montessori School - Fort Wayne, Indiana Grade-4 Project Number- 50Title: ErosionView Project e-Portfolio--What is erosion? Erosion is when natural elements like rain, snow, ice or wind cause sediment, soil, or land to fall out of place and travel elsewhere. We are testing different man made and natural resources to discover what things can be done to minimize the effect erosion and simulate what erosion loos like in certain situations. My question was: What can humans do to minimize erosion and its effects and my hypothesis was: Man made objects and things found in nature might help the problems of erosion. I researched man made erosion control systems like erosion fencing, rock systems, and walls and levees. I also researched natural erosion control methods such as vegetation and roots systems and sticks and leaves. I also researched previous ways scientists have tested soil erosion. Conclusions: I discovered that if nothing is done to prevent erosion, erosion will occur naturally. I know this because in our first sample where we used nothing to help the soil stay in place and the effect was that a lot of sediment fell out into the container causing the water to be dirty and more erosion happened and the data showed erosion got worse over time this was the least effective but it was the control which shows what happens if nothing is done. The most effective was the man made erosion rock system. I think it was very effective because it locked the soil in place and it filtered it. The data shows from the very beginning it was very effective. I even tried drinking it, it tasted like potting soil but mostly water. The next most effective erosion system was the natural ground cover (leaves). It was the next most effective because after time the leaves sunk in and held the soil in place preventing the soil from escaping and in the end it even outperformed the man made rock system I created. On the last 2 experiments on the leaves I also noticed that tiny lakes were formed because the leaves blocked the way of water and soil. The least effective besides the control was vegetation. This came as a surprise because in our research we saw that vegetation was most effective. The data also showed that vegetation was way better than the control because the roots held the sediment and water in showing that it is effective. But just not effective as the other 2 systems that I created.
Jacquelyn Raben | St Joseph Catholic School - Evansville, INGrade-4 Project Number- 51Title: How does different amounts of microwave energy affect the germination of grass seed?View Project e-Portfolio--I wanted to figure out how radiation from the microwave can change the process of grass seed germination. I microwaved the grass seed for different amounts of time. The microwave time was an independent variable. I planted them with the labels that matched the time they were in the microwave. I insured that each set of seeds was planted in the same way and got the same amount of sunlight and water. I recorded results for 14 days. The grass seed that was microwaved for 45 seconds germinated first, followed by 15 seconds and then 30 seconds. The seeds that were not microwaved spouted last and 1 minute did not sprout. An unexpected result was that the grass seed that was in the microwave for 0 seconds sprouted after the other ones and 1 minute did not spout. It might be possible that a little microwave radiation could speed up the germination of grass seed. This project shows that small amounts of radiation you apply to grass seed will have a result of sprouting faster.
Brooklyn Cooper | Marrs Elementary School - Mount Vernon, INGrade-5 Project Number- 52Title: Amazing AbsorbersView Project e-Portfolio--I am a competitive swimmer and I did this project so I would know which type of towel would dry me off the best. The purpose of this project was to determine which type of towel absorbs the most water when drying off. I chose to test three different types of towels; a cotton towel, a microfiber towel, and a chamois towel. I thought that the cotton towel would be the most absorbent, because I use cotton towels at swim practice and they dry me off well. My research indicates that natural fibers, like cotton, are made of cellulose, whose sugar molecules can break water’s surface tension so that it moves into the space between the fibers, and into the fiber themselves. I had a swimmer that had been fully submerged in water dry off for 40 seconds with each type of towel and repeated multiple trials. The towel was weighed before and after the swimmer dried off. The cotton towel absorbed the most water. However the chamois towel absorbed the most amount of water per square inch. The chamois towel absorbed 0.612 g/in2. The microfiber towel absorbed 0.116 g/in2. The cotton towel absorbed the least amount of water per square inch at 0.112 g/in2. My hypothesis was partially correct. This applies to real life because if you are packing a bag to go swimming, you may want to know which type of towel is smaller to fit inside a bag better, but still effective at drying you off.
Aiden Zimmer | Southern Indiana Career and Technical Center - Mount Vernon, IndianaGrade-5 Project Number- 53Title: Boats and Their Hull ShapeView Project e-Portfolio--The flatter the hull of a boat is, the more weight the boat can hold. Increased surface area in the water also holds more weight. Increased flat surface area in the water can hold more weight, however it can not travel as fast as the other hulls. When companies transport items by water, several variables must be considered to determine the most efficient method of transporting goods.
Colette Rodriguez | Lafayette Sunnyside Middle School - Lafayette Indiana, IndianaGrade-5 Project Number- 54Title: Pups and PorkView Project e-Portfolio--Abstract — Pork and Pups Purpose The purpose of this experiment is to find out what types of food dogs prefer. I became interested in this experiment when my dogs started to become hungrier. The information from this experiment can help people that want to save some money. The results of this experiment can give dog owners an idea of what their dog might like and will fill them up. Procedure 1) Gather four dogs and put one of them on a leash. 2) Put the dog on a leash in a room away from the other dogs. 3) Cook the turkey, beef,Pork, and salmon. 4) Pour their everyday kibble in their dog bowl. 5) Once the turkey, beef, pork, and salmon are done cooking cut them up into four sections and put each piece of meat in their own plastic bowl. 6) Put the kibble and all four pieces of meat in front of them and record which food the dog goes for first. Data The test subjects' averages Sadie - 25% Lexi - 0% Junie - 50% Violet - 25% Conclusion I’ve found an answer to my question; what food do dogs prefer? The data that I collected was inconclusive. One challenge I faced was ensuring equal food portions. If repeated, I'd include a wider meat variety, not just four types. The results of this experiment can guide businesses in selecting meats for dog food to boost profits.
Ellie Closurdo | Prairie Vista - Granger, IndianaGrade-5 Project Number- 55Title: Dirty Mouth?View Project e-Portfolio--I wanted to find out what species had the dirtiest mouth. I studied this by watching 5 agar plates for each 4 species for seven days in a room temperature setting. I can see that the adults did not grow very much .I can see that the dogs had a moderate amount of bacteria. I can see that the horses have the most bacteria. H1, H3, and H4 have hair-like substances in the plate. There is growth of yellow and white and green bacteria covering the surface of all 5 of the plates.I can see that the cats do not have the most bacteria. C4 has only 17 dots of bacteria and they were very little. C1 and C5 have bigger spots while C2, C3, and C4 have smaller and yellow dot. I found out that the horses have the dirtiest mouth and the adults have the least amount of bacteria. If I redid the experiment, I would take photos everyday or do a time lapse video to track the growth. I would also like to test additional animals.
Adeline Niemier | Prairie Vista - Granger, IN Grade-5 Project Number- 56Title: Siri-ously Funny? Can AI Outwit Humans in Humor?View Project e-Portfolio--With Artificial Intelligence (AI) we use and train computers to complete tasks that normally require humans. AI is becoming more powerful and can quickly generate essays, images, code, and music. However, are computers as good as humans on creative tasks, specifically creating humor content? My goal is to study if language-generating AI can write dad jokes that are as funny as human-written jokes. I will test how funny 4th/5th grade students rate human-written and AI-generated dad jokes. Hypothesis: Human-written jokes will receive higher humor scores than AI-generated jokes. I believe that when students are asked to rate how funny human and AI jokes are, they will think that human-written jokes are funnier. I selected 15 human-written jokes from a research paper and created 15 AI-generated jokes with GPT4. A Google search was conducted for each AI-generated joke to ensure it could not be found online and therefore original. 4th/5th grade students (n=92) completed an online survey to rate all 30 jokes on a 5-point scale and a mean humor score was calculated for each joke. My hypothesis was correct as language-generating AI could not produce original dad jokes that were as funny as human-written jokes. Across grade and gender, human-written jokes outperformed AI-generated jokes. The mean humor rating for human jokes was 24% higher than AI jokes (3.04 vs. 2.45). Results suggest that AI cannot currently write funnier dad jokes than humans, but if a model were trained specifically on humor perhaps it could in the future.
Ashlyn Schafer | Arcola School - Fort Wayne, INGrade-5 Project Number- 57Title: Corrosion CatastropheView Project e-Portfolio--My project was if there are any common salts found in our homes that can melt ice and snow, but do not rust the metals as much as road de-icers. My hypothesis was that table salt (Sodium Chloride) would make the ice melt and cause minimal rust out of the salts that I tested. This is because the solubility level of sodium chloride was the highest so, it could absorb the most water. The way I tested this was by taking clean steel tiles, one for each salt solution and dipping it into that solution 3 times a day for 4 days. Over this experimental period, the metal test pieces rusted different amounts depending on the salt solution each piece was dipped. Before each time I dipped the test pieces into their solutions, I recorded the data by taking a picture to record the amount of rust. After recording and comparing all the data, I concluded that my hypothesis was correct. Of the salts in my house, the table salt (sodium chloride) melted the most ice (7g). While it did cause more rust than the other salts from my house, the other salts didn’t melt any ice. The table salt produced less rust than the de-icers that we bought. This shows that that the higher the solubility, the more ice that the salt melts.
Xavier Baumgartner | McKenney Harrison Elementary - Auburn, INGrade-4 Project Number- 58Title: Float or Fail?View Project e-Portfolio--My topic was is it possible to make concrete boats float by using different designs and different concrete mixing methods. I chose this project because I’ve always been fascinated by how boats float on water and I thought a science fair would be a great opportunity to gain a better understanding of the science behind it. My hypothesis stated that I believe it’s possible to make a boat out of concrete that floats on water using different materials and different methods of mixing concrete. I thought this because if an engineer can make a two ton boat float, I can make a thirty six ounce boat float too. For my experiment I determined what designs to make: Brick, Flat, Boat, and Bowl. Based on these designs, I made different types of concrete molds using foam. Then I came up with a concrete mixture and mixed it inside a 5 gallon bucket. I then added saran wrap in the molds to make it easier to remove the set concrete. With the saran wrap in place, I poured the concrete into the molds, making sure each mold got only 36 ounces of concrete. In order to ensure proper cure time, I let the concrete sit for 24 hours and then removed the boats from the molds. To measure the surface area of each molded boat, I used sheets of saran wrap to measure the outside portion of each boat design. I added water into a large plastic container and then tested each design to determine if it floats. I recorded the results and repeated the steps for each boat design and for each concrete mix. My hypothesis that I believe it’s possible to make a boat out of concrete that floats on water was correct. My experiments proved that different concrete mixes and boat designs worked better than others. The only successful boat design was the bowl shape, however, it only floated using the concrete with sand and foam aggregates. Throughout this project, I learned a lot about boat designs. I learned how to create molds for concrete. How to calculate the area of different shaped objects. I learned what density is and why it is important for buoyancy. I learned about different types of concrete mixes, specifically the aggregates and how they change the density of the concrete. I learned that experiments take a lot of time to do them properly. I learned the importance of being careful when running experiment trials. I learned how to record results.
Lincoln Moser | St John Lutheran School - Ligonier, INGrade-4 Project Number- 59Title: Cooling StrengthView Project e-Portfolio--In my project I choose to test whether palm cooling for 2 minutes between bicep curls would help increase the number of curls a person could complete. Palm cooling is when something, in my case a single walled water bottle, is filled with 50-60 degree F water is held in the palms of your hand to cool down your blood flow and in turn your muscles. My hypothesis was that it would help. I tested 17 people and through my investigation, which included collecting base data from each subject and then data including the palm cooling, I found that my hypothesis was correct, and the palm cooling did help subject complete more curls.
Mason Tidrow | Centerville-Abington Elem School - Centerville, INGrade-5 Project Number- 60Title: Spinach & SoilView Project e-Portfolio--I studied which kinds of soils help plants grow best because I grow plants on our farm, and I want to know how to grow stronger plants so I can maximize food production. I chose to grow spinach because it grows quickly, allowing enough time to complete my project. I decided the plant that grew the best would be the strongest with the most leaves at the end of the experiment. I used four different types of soil: bagged potting soil, a 50/50 mixture of potting soil and loamy soil, a 50/50 mixture of potting soil and compost, and a 50/50 mixture of potting soil and sand. I planted four seeds in each cup, put them in a South-facing window, and watered all samples with one tablespoon of collected rainwater. I checked the plants daily and made notes weekly about their growth and the soil. I hypothesized the soil with compost would grow best because compost increases soil nutrients needed for plant growth. After three weeks, two samples had plants: potting soil and loamy soil. The loamy soil grew best because the plant stems were thicker and taller. My hypothesis was incorrect because loamy soil grew spinach better than compost soil. I think the loamy soil grew best because it allowed room for root growth and enough water. I think the compost soil failed because it did not hold water well, so despite the nutrients in compost, the plants couldn’t use them due to lack of water.
Grace Brandenstein | St Elizabeth Ann Seton E & W - Richmond, IndianaGrade-5 Project Number- 61Title: STOP LADYBUGGING ME! View Project e-Portfolio--Introduction: This past fall, my room was infested with hundreds of ladybugs called the Asian Lady Beetle. They are an invasive pest affecting homes across America. Asian Lady Beetles can be aggressive. They bite! They release a foul-smelling odor when disturbed. They can leave behind yellow stains. They can cause allergic reactions and even worsen asthma. Objective: Sticky traps are a common and safe method for managing Asian Lady Beetle infestations. My project is a comparative study examining which is most effective, the commonly sold sticky fly ribbon marketed to catch flying insects, which includes ladybugs, or my homemade ladybug trap constructed based on what I learned about ladybugs in research. Procedure: One-hundred ladybugs were released into two different 4 ft butterfly habitats with one containing two sticky fly ribbons and one with my homemade trap (Grace’s Ladybug Motel) which utilized contrasting colors and horizontal UV light. Results were collected in 24 hrs. Results: Grace’s Ladybug Motel caught 63 out of 100 ladybugs, and the commercial sticky fly ribbon caught 0. Observations- ladybugs that did not enter my trap congregated around it at the bottom of the habitat, but the ladybugs in the other habitat went to the top. Conclusion: Grace’s Ladybug Motel is superior at catching ladybugs compared to the commonly sold sticky fly ribbon. Because many of the ladybugs that did not go into the homemade trap still congregated around it, my trap will make ladybugs easier to vacuum up, even if they do not enter the trap.
Erebus Wilson | Hibberd Intermediate School - Richmond, IndianaGrade-5 Project Number- 62Title: Old versus New ToothpasteView Project e-Portfolio--I wanted to know which toothpaste would produce the whitish toothpaste. So I started to do some research on toothpaste, the properties, and what makes it help teeth stay white. Next I had to decide what types of toothpaste to test my hypothesis on and decided on the following: Baking soda, crest 3d, crest baking soda, Burt's bee charcoal, and Colgate. I believed that the newer type of toothpaste - baking soda would be the best. It turns out that I was wrong! Baking soda had the best results as it produced the whitish egg.
Nadia Bakshi | Hibberd Intermediate School - Richmond, IndianaGrade-5 Project Number- 63Title: Lemons and ElectricityView Project e-Portfolio--Food waste is becoming a big problem globally. In fact, “Americans throw out 4.9 pounds of trash per person daily - that’s nearly 1,800 pounds of materials per American every year.” A significant portion of this trash is food waste. There is a lot of research happening with how we can reuse our waste. A common household science experiment is making a battery out of lemons. Understanding that lemons can conduct electricity, I wanted to understand if the waste left behind had any citric acid that could be repurposed. I hypothesized that the juice from the lemon would be more efficient than the lemon waste in generating voltage. Although my hypothesis was incorrect, it led to an investigation into the possibility of using citrus fruit waste as an energy source instead of simply throwing it away. Research shows that globally, 10 million tonnes of citrus fruit waste is produced. This waste can be used to reduce energy consumption by mass food producers, recycling centers, and within the farming industry. I hope that based on this understanding, we can continue to research opportunities for food waste and put this knowledge into action to reduce our global footprint.
Kaylen Loy | East Central Region Home Schools - Anderson, IndianaGrade-5 Project Number- 64Title: The Homopolar MotorView Project e-Portfolio--What are magnets and why are they important? To understand the question, research coupled with a simple experiment may help individuals comprehend a little better. Most understand the concept of what a magnet is and how it works. A magnet is an object with a north and south pole that can produce a magnetic field. These poles either attract or repel other poles. For example, negative would be attracted to positive and repel another negative and vice versa. Magnets are fun to play with, however, they are very important in everyday life. Magnets power items such as DVD players. They are found in appliances around the home such as the refrigerator and microwave. Healthcare also uses magnets. An MRI machine is a very large magnet that helps the doctors see what’s happening in the human body. Healthcare also uses magnets to turn off pacemakers when a patient needs to have surgery. The purpose of this research was to demonstrate how a simple magnet has a great purpose in everyday life. The need to understand how something so small could be used to create an electrical current. It would also determine if the size of the object would matter when it came to determining acceleration of the object. For this experiment, the items utilized were 3 neodymium magnets, a AA battery, and copper wire cut to various lengths and weights. The hope for this study is to educate people on the importance and benefits of magnets.
Weston Miller | Ryan Park Elementary School - Angola, INGrade-5 Project Number- 65Title: Can Ferrofluids and Magnets Be Used to Remove Oil From Water?View Project e-Portfolio--Can we use magnets to save the ocean? It is estimated that 706 million gallons of oil are spilled into the ocean each year. The goal of this experiment was to find out if we can use magnetic nanoparticles suspended in oil (ferrofluid) and a strong magnet to remove mineral oil from water. I added 10 mL of water into 3 small bowls and put 1.25 mL of mineral oil into each one. Next, I added no drops of ferrofluid to the first bowl, 1 drop of ferrofluid to the next, and 5 drops of ferrofluid into the last bowl. I used a strong neodymium magnet and pulled it through each bowl 2 times (cleaning it off between pulls). Then I poured the remaining contents of each bowl into a graduated cylinder to measure how much oil was left. After 3 trials I determined that the most oil was removed from the bowl containing 5 drops of ferrofluid. I calculated the efficiency of oil removal from the bowl with no ferrofluid to be 43%, the bowl with 1 drop of ferrofluid was 63% efficient, and the bowl containing 5 drops of ferrofluid had an efficiency of oil removal of 92%! My hypothesis was correct- the bowl containing the most ferrofluid was able to remove the most oil. My hope is that ferrofluids and magnets could be used in the real world to help protect our oceans and wildlife from oil contamination.
Adeleine Rentz | Ryan Park Elementary School - Angola, Indiana Grade-5 Project Number- 66Title: Does Caffeine Help Plants Grow?View Project e-Portfolio--My project asked if caffeine help plants grow. My hypothesis is that caffeine will not help plants grow. Caffeine is not good for people so I do not believe it will be good for plants either. For my experiment, I planted one sprouted pea seed in a glass canning jar. I planted three jars for every level of caffeine. I used three types of caffeinated items for my experiment. I used pond water because it helped the plants grow the best in previous projects. I added the coffee, tea, and caffeine pill to the water and left one as pond water without caffeine. I used popsicle sticks and numbered them to keep track of the different pots. I picked numbers from a box so I could pick the spots to put the jars. I put them on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. I monitored the moisture and watered the plants when the majority were dry. I made sure to put the same amount of water in each jar. Once a week I measured the growth. My hypothesis that caffeine would not help plants grow was true at the end of the experiment. Out of the caffeinated plants, the plants watered with tea did the best. Of the caffeinated options, tea had the least amount of caffeine with about 3 mg per ounce. The two options with the most caffeine, coffee and caffeine pill, started out strong, but by the end of the experiment they were not healthy looking.
Anya Khan | Northpoint Elementary School - Granger, IndianaGrade-4 Project Number- 67Title: Safe and clean drinking waterView Project e-Portfolio--After water falls to the ground as rain, it dissolves the minerals present in the rocks and soil it passes over or through. As it dissolves these minerals, they remain in the water at varying levels of concentration. This is a very natural process and it helps make water taste “right” by slightly raising the pH of the water. The most common minerals found in water are calcium, magnesium, and sodium. Some areas of the country have higher levels of these dissolved minerals in their water making it “hard” and other areas have lower levels. According to the Water Quality Association, water in the 120 mg/L (or ppm) and above range is considered hard, with 180 mg/L being considered very hard. Water in the 80 to 100 mg/L range is ideal, meaning it’s not too hard and has the right amount of dissolved minerals for optimal taste. As the TDS level goes below 17 mg/L, (as the minerals are removed) it becomes “soft”, with a lower pH and more acidity.
Elin Zhang | Northpoint Elementary School - Granger, IndianaGrade-5 Project Number- 68Title: Astronauts Training At HomeView Project e-Portfolio--In this project, I solved how to experience weightlessness at home and train as an astronaut in a backyard swimming pool. By adding salinity to the water, the density of the fluid changes, resulting in neutral buoyancy in the water. The objects seem to be weightless, as it is in the zero gravity of space. Furthermore, The methodology to create a weightless environment in a swimming pool was established.
Bennett Harding | Madison Elementary School - South Bend, INGrade-5 Project Number- 69Title: What are the chances of winning lucky #7?View Project e-Portfolio--This project studies the probability of a marble landing in a specific slot (#7) within a marble run with 11 possible outcomes. The primary experiment involved dropping a marble 1,000 times from the top of the marble run and analyzing the results. Additional experiments studied the impact changing the marble drop point. The original hypothesis of a 1 in 11 chance (9.1%) of the marble landing in the #7 slot was not correct. Using Pascal's Triangle, the theoretical probability of landing in the #7 slot should be 210 in 1024 (20.5%) and should follow a normal curve for all outcomes. However, the experimental results dropped above the 6 slot showed that 105 in 1,000 drops (10.5%) landed in #7 and generally follow a normal curve for all outcomes with a mean of 5.8. Overall, three things affect the chances of the marble landing in the #7 slot. The level where the marble is dropped determines the number of rows and total theoretical pathways. Secondly, the marble drop point and the location of the #7 slot on the marble run affects the chances of the marble landing there. The slot directly below the location where the marble is dropped should be the mean and the most likely landing spot. The chances on either side of the mean should follow a normal curve. Lastly, experimental results may vary depending on sample size, large top borders, and other factors.
Cora Hitchcock , Cassidy Lehman | Union Elementary School - Zionsville, INGrade-4 Project Number- 70Title: Plastic from Milk and AcidsView Project e-Portfolio-- We did not know that you can make plastic out of milk and we are interested in how this happens using acids. We want to do this topic because we find it interesting and are interested in environmentally friendly processes. We are hoping to find out which type of acid yields the most plastic out of milk. We believe lime juice will make the most plastic because it is the most acidic. We got five mugs and put four teaspoons of acid (either vinegar, lemon juice, lime juice, orange juice, or 7up) in each mug. We added warm milk to each mug. If curds (casein plastic) formed, we collected the curds in pantyhose. Then we weighed the curds. We repeated the experiment two more times. We found that our hypothesis was wrong, and the vinegar produced the most amount of plastic. We learned that it is important to do multiple trials in science experiments. We could further test the project with bad milk, fresh juice versus processed juice, different temperatures of milk, and different types of milk (like soy, almond, fat free, coconut, chocolate, and strawberry milk).
Alexander Pleus | Trailside Elem School - Zionsville, IndianaGrade-4 Project Number- 71Title: This Project is a Long ShotView Project e-Portfolio--I love history and I love science, so what better way to combine them and learn about both than to put history into action using science. This project uses model-size catapults to learn about the physics involved and to determine if a trebuchet or an onager will throw a projectile the farthest. My research told me that trebuchets threw projectiles (for example: rocks, flaming barrels, baskets of snakes, diseased animal carcasses, human heads and poop!) farther than onagers. I wanted to see this in action so I could understand how much farther a trebuchet can throw and to understand how these catapults actually worked. The trebuchet catapult uses gravity and the force of a counterweight to launch projectiles. The onager catapult uses rope torsion to launch projectiles. My hypothesis was that the trebuchet would throw farther than the onager. I tested my hypothesis by building a model-size trebuchet and an onager. My first prototype was using popsicle sticks and rubber bands, but I figured out that the materials were not stable. With the help of my grandfather, I built a trebuchet and an onager from wood, keeping the throwing arms of equal length in order to maintain a fair experiment. These machines use different types of force to launch their projectiles, so their designs are different. I wanted to maintain consistency in throwing arm length, projectile size and how the projectile attaches to the catapult. In my experiment I used slings to attach the projectile. My research told me that trebuchets use slings and onagers can use slings or baskets. To maintain a fair experiment, both of my catapults use slings. To determine which catapult would throw the farthest, I started by determining a launch point. Each trial for each catapult started at this launch point. I launched the projectile ten times from each catapult and marked each landing spot with a marker. I then measured from the launch point to the landing point and entered this data in Excel. The most important variable in this experiment is the type of force used by the catapult - the trebuchet uses gravity and the onager uses torsion. I found during my experiment that the length of the sling was also an important variable that had a huge impact on the distance the projectile traveled. The experiment results supported my hypothesis by showing that on average the trebuchet throws the projectile farther than the onager. The onager's best performance was with the short sling and it threw on average 156.05 inches. The trebuchet's best performance was with the long sling and it threw on average 174.96 inches. The experiment also showed that the sling length is crucial in throwing the projectile - especially for the onager! The onager works best with the short sling, because the projectile starts accelerating instantly. The trebuchet works best with the long sling, because it doubles the length of the throwing arm giving it a higher release point. Also, the trebuchet's sling is stretched out to reduce slack so the projectile starts accelerating instantly. This experiment also shows that there are lot of Newton's Laws of Motion in action. I also learned a lot about Newton's Laws while conducting this test.
Zoe Beyer | Eastern Hancock Elem School - Greenfield, INGrade-5 Project Number- 72Title: Things Are Heating UpView Project e-Portfolio--Has your parent ever told you to not wear a black shirt on a hot summer day? Have you every wondered why bathing suits are usually light colored? My project: Things Are Heating Up will help explain why! My question: Which color (red, blue, green, yellow, white, black or purple) will produce the most heat energy by light absorption? My hypothesis: I believe that black will produce the most heat energy from light absorption. My Procedures: Step 1: Drill a hole in the lid of each 7 identical glass jars. Step 2: Wrap each jar in a different color of construction paper. Make sure there is no gap between the paper and the jar. Step 3:Gently fill the jars with the same amount of water Step 4: Put the lids on the jars and let them set for 10-20 minutes (this is to give the water time to reach room temperature) Step 5: Put the thermometers in each hole and put clay around the thermometer to close the gaps around the hole. (Make sure you can still read the thermometer and that they are at the same height for each jar. Step 6: Record the starting temperature for each jar. Step 7: Set up a heat lamp so that it can heat the jar 15-30 cm away. Step 8: Leave one jar by the heat lamp for 30 minutes and check/record temperature when time is up. Step 9: Repeat these steps with each color of jar. Step 10: Repeat experiment at least 3 times. Results: NOTES: I made 2 adjustments during my experiment trials: **After Trial 1, I was not seeing results in the 30 minute time frame. I decided I needed to make a change. I had filled the water in the jars nearly full. I believed that the amount of water was too much to heat up in the 30 minute time frame, so I refilled each jar with the same SMALLER amount of water. **After Trail 2, I was still not seeing a change in water temperature, so I needed to change another variable. I chose to change the distance instead of increasing the time. I moved my jars from 30 cm away from the heat lamp to 15 cm away from the heat lamp. During Trial 3 I started to see a change; therefore I did the experiment three more times using these new guidelines. Trials 3-6 gave me valid data that was reliable. The independent variable (the wavelengths coming from the heat lamp) pushes the dependent variable (temperature of the water) to a certain temperature. The only difference between the jars was the color of paper wrapped around them. During the experiment, the heat lamp produced wavelengths. Each color of jar absorbed/reflected different wavelengths which led to the heating of the water inside the jar. My hypothesis was proven true, the jar with the black construction paper heated to the highest temperature consistently. Atoms and molecules contain electrons. It is often useful to think of these electrons as being attached to the atoms by springs. The electrons and their attached springs have a tendency to vibrate at specific frequencies. The electrons of atoms have a natural frequency at which they tend to vibrate. When a light wave with that same natural frequency impinges upon an atom, then the electrons of that atom will be set into vibrational motion. If a light wave of a given frequency strikes a material with electrons having the same vibrational frequencies, then those electrons will absorb the energy of the light wave and transform it into vibrational motion. During its vibration, the electrons interact with neighboring atoms in such a manner as to convert its vibrational energy into thermal energy. (https://www.physicsclassroom.com/distance-learning-in-physics) With black absorbing all wavelengths of light, more atoms will be sent into vibrational motion therefore converting into more heat energy. White reflects all wavelengths of light which leads to no heat energy conversion. How much each color’s temperature increased depended on the wavelengths absorbed. If I were to do this experiment again, I would use the actual sun instead of a heat lamp. Energy Engineers help to find ways to reduce the energy used in homes and buildings. Solar energy is just one way we can help to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases.
Zara Tsai | Cherry Tree Elementary School - Carmel, INGrade-5 Project Number- 73Title: Am I a Narwhal or Nonwhal?View Project e-Portfolio--The purpose of my project is to determine whether a computer can learn to correctly identify an image of a narwhal. My hypothesis is that the computer will be able to learn what is and is not a narwhal. I also think the more data the computer has to learn from, the better it will be able to identify narwhals and non-narwhals. I tested its ability to identify narwhals after training it with 1, 5, 15, 30 or 50 pairs of learning images. The key materials were a set of learning images including narwhals and non-narwhals, a different set of test images containing narwhals and non-narwhals and a machine learning program to evaluate the test images. The procedures included drawing 50 images of narwhals and 50 images of non-narwhals as the learning set and asking family and friends to draw 50 images including narwhals and non-narwhals as the testing set. Then I used a machine learning program to create a computer model using different numbers of learning images to test my hypothesis. For each condition, I recorded whether the computer accurately identified the image as a narwhal or non-narwhal and then analyzed my data. My results showed that with more data that the computer had to learn from, it was able to better identify the narwhals and non-narwhals correctly. So, my hypothesis was correct. From this project, my conclusion is that computers can learn just like humans and its ability to learn improves when more data are used to train it.
Nora Tekoppel , Holly Werner | St Philip School - Evansville, IndianaGrade-6 Project Number- 100Title: Which Brand of AA Batteries Produces the Most Energy?View Project e-Portfolio--The purpose of doing this experiment was to see if the more expensive batteries were worth the money. Now people will know that buying a more expensive battery (like Duracell) may be worth the money because it is longer lasting and produces more energy. The question was; Which brand of AA batteries produces the most energy? The answer was Duracell. The students figured that out by conducting an experiment that involved a homopolar motor. They put a battery on top of neodymium magnets. They then bent the copper wire, in a rectangle, to touch the neodymium magnets and the positive end of the battery. They will then take a video of the motor spinning for 3 seconds. They will watch that video in slow motion and see which one spins the fastest. After using the homopolar motor on three different brands of batteries the students conclude that Duracell spins the fastest. Therefore, it produces the most energy. The Energizer battery spun faster than the Amazon battery but slower than Duracell. Amazon batteries spun the slowest out of all three brands. The students conducted this experiment three times to conclude this information. The students' hypothesis was correct. Duracell batteries spun faster than all of the other brands that they tested. If the students were to complete this experiment again they would bend the copper wire better and more precisely to fit around the magnets tighter. All three times that the students conducted the experiment the results were consistent.
Asma Fareed | Eman Schools - Fishers, IndianaGrade-6 Project Number- 101Title: Pure Water = Pure LifeView Project e-Portfolio--My project is basically about how natural water filters play a crucial role in our lives. Without purified water some people die from hydration. So, i decided to take a closer look and I was able to find out the seven natural water filters. I was able to use all of the natural water filters in my project except Maifan stone which I didn't have the access to and the Oysters Natural water filter.Now, back to what I was saying before even though water plays a crucial part of our lives some people have access,and others don't. For example, about 37% of people in the world aren't drinking the amount of water they need,15.3% of the world have NO access to clean water, 13.4% of the people in the world have no access to water at all,and 34.3% of people in the world have access to clean water.This shows how much this project can do for others. Mostly around the SAVANNAH dessert and we could take our modern day Gaza/ mostly the WEST BANK as an objective as well.In my project I sorted out each of the non-living substances from the substances that covered almost all of the surface area towards the bottom and substances that covered not as much surface area at the top. That way bigger dirt particles can get stuck on the top itself and the tiny particles would be filtered out towards the end. So this is why the Model with the Charcoal (Model A) was able to cover more surface area , and was the best filter because the charcoal wasn't really GRAINY like the sand. I just wanted to point out that when the water came out of the filter you can't drink it you have to boil it to successfully remove EVERY dirt particle.Famous Quote::We never know the worth of water until the well is dry", this was written by Thomas Fuller:English churchman,Writer, and historian who wrote many witty and wise sayings ; newspaper publisher, and I have got to say this man seemed VERY wise.
Ryker Shumard | Woodside Middle School - Fort Wayne, INGrade-6 Project Number- 102Title: Coin BatteriesView Project e-Portfolio--I was trying to find out which battery produced the most voltage measured in milliamps (mA). I thought the size of the quarter and the material of the penny would produce voltage best but the thickness and material of the nickel, and the material of the penny produced almost 35 times more voltage than the quarter and penny. I did the test by mixing salt and vinegar, dipping pieces of paper towel into that solution, folding a 2x8 cm aluminum foil piece into ⅓, then stacking the coins. When I tested the batteries, the penny and nickel produced 0.103 mA, the penny and dime produced 0.010 mA, and the penny and quarter produced 0.03 mA.
Gianna LaPan | Summit Middle School - Fort Wayne, IndianaGrade-6 Project Number- 103Title: Does the location of the water affect the amount of pollutionView Project e-Portfolio--I did this experiment to find out how much pollution is in the water that is in our area. My hypothesis was that if I use the water from my backyard, then it will be the least polluted. To summarize the procedure I got 36 ml of water from three different bodies of water, then tested 18 ml at a time with a water test kit (Comfort Club), then I collected my data. I established control by making sure to clean supplies after each test, not getting the water samples mixed, spilled, or lost, having a clean dry workspace, making sure the towel is freshly cleaned and completely dry, clean all materials before I start testing. Overall there were more similarities than differences between the three bodies of water that I tested. Some of the noted differences were pH, hardness, total chlorine, and sulfate. From the data that I collected I can’t find which lake is necessarily the cleanest. But the ph for the Creek was better than the others because it was at a seven which is also neutral.
Nova Gensic | Carroll Middle School - Fort Wayne, INGrade-6 Project Number- 104Title: ElectrolytesView Project e-Portfolio--The purpose of my project is to determine which sports drink has the most electrolytes so that people can help their body function properly. I tested the concentration of electrolytes in multiple sports drinks that are readily available in the United States. This testing involved using a multimeter to measure the conductivity in a liquid, which is proportional to the concentration of electrolytes in a sports drink. The sports drink with the highest concentration of electrolytes tested was Bodyarmor Flash I.V., measuring 118.23 mA. Through research and testing I was able to determine that having a balanced diet and drinking water can provide enough electrolytes in the body. However, when physical activity is performed, climate conditions are excessive, or medical conditions affect how the body functions in relation to electrolytes, a sports drink with the right concentration of electrolytes can help a person keep the electrolytes balanced correctly in their body. If I were to invent a sports drink, I would make a hypertonic sports drink called SUPERNOVA! It would contain coconut water and real cherry flavoring, with a high concentration of sodium and chloride and a lower concentration of magnesium, calcium, potassium, and phosphate. This concentration of electrolytes would be beneficial to those with medical conditions similar to mine.
Akalkirat Lehal | Honey Creek Middle School - Terre Haute, IndianaGrade-6 Project Number- 105Title: How do different natural dyes effect the power output and efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells.View Project e-Portfolio--Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) represent a promising avenue in solar energy conversion due to their unique structure utilizing natural dyes. My research explores the efficiency of natural dyes extracted from blueberries, strawberries, and pomegranates as sensitizers in DSSCs. The experiment encompasses creation, testing, and analysis to evaluate the impact of these natural dyes on the power output and efficiency of the solar cells. Blueberries emerged as the most effective sensitizer, consistently exhibiting the highest power output across trials. Their superiority is attributed to the higher concentration of anthocyanins, which possess strong light-absorbing properties. Strawberries and pomegranates, while yielding lower power outputs than blueberries, still outperformed the control group, underscoring the potential of natural dyes in enhancing DSSC efficiency. This research highlights the significance of conducting multiple experiments to address variability and environmental influences. Despite potential errors such as variations in fruit quality or application consistency, the results demonstrate the effectiveness of blueberries as a potential candidate for DSSC applications. Further developments could focus on improving cell durability under direct sunlight and exploring natural dyes with higher anthocyanin contents. Additionally, research could investigate cost-effective materials to enable large-scale production of DSSCs, ensuring accessibility to sustainable energy solutions. Overall, this study contributes to advancing the understanding of natural pigment-based DSSCs, paving the way for sustainable, cost effective, and efficient solar cell technologies.
Kelsey Powell | Honey Creek Middle School - Terre Haute, IndianaGrade-6 Project Number- 106Title: Germination of radish and pepper seeds in five different soilless mediums.View Project e-Portfolio-- Every soil medium for plants say that they all work the best, but which ones work the best to germinate in 12 with radishes and peppers? The procedure was over what is the best soil medium to use to germinate the fastest over the course of 12 days. My hypothesis is that the commercial starting soil mix will work the best because it has a mix of coconut coir, vermiculite, and peat moss to get the best growing medium for seed germination. The kinds of soil mediums that are coconut coir, vermiculite, sphagnum peat moss, sand, and commercial seed starter mix. Rows 2 and 7 had coconut coir, rows 3 and 8 had the vermiculite, rows 5 and 9 had the sphagnum peat moss, rows 6 and 10 had the sand, and rows 6 and 11 had the commercial seed starter mix. The best one to use is the sphagnum peat moss which won to the second best one the commercial seed starter mix by 3 sprouts. So, the best one to use is the sphagnum peat moss.
Michael Eckert | Evansville Day School - Evansville, IndianaGrade-6 Project Number- 107Title: Flash FreezeView Project e-Portfolio-- The purpose of this experiment was to figure out what cooling method makes a soda cool the fastest. This project’s hypothesis was: If one puts a can of soda in the freezer, then it will cool faster than other methods of cooling.The soda cans, time, amount of ice or water, and the starting temperature of each can of soda were some of the constants for this experiment. The independent variable for this experiment was the cooling method used. There were four methods used in this experiment: freezer, fridge, ice bath, and ice water bath. The dependent variable for this experiment was the temperature of the soda. The temperature was measured every five minutes using an instant read digital thermometer. The hypothesis for this experiment was not supported. The results were that the sodas in the ice water bath got the coldest temperature at the end of the hour, but the freezer temperature was only three or four degrees Celsius off at the end from the ice water bath. Thus, the hypothesis was not supported by the data.If one were to expand this experiment, one could try and use different drinks, such as orange juice or apple juice, to see if the density of the drink or if the carbonation of the soda makes a difference.
Judah Bowersox | Helfrich Park Middle School - Evansville, IndianaGrade-6 Project Number- 108Title: Sizzilin' ScienceView Project e-Portfolio--The weigthed blanket porduced the most static electricity because the thickness of the material.
Ellie Jastrzebski | Lafayette Sunnyside Middle School - Lafayette, INGrade-6 Project Number- 109Title: Uncovering MicroplasticsView Project e-Portfolio--Microplastics are tiny plastic particles that are less than 1 mm in size. They are found in the waters of the world and are known to hurt animals. Because microplastics are very small, it is very difficult to see them to know if they are polluting a river or lake. I wanted to try to dye microplastics so I could make them glow and be seen by UV light. I tested 6 different dyes and three different types of plastics, a bottle, and cup and a bag. I tried the large milliplastics first and found that it worked! I could dye plastics, with the bottle working best with the pink dye, the bag working best with the pink and neon green dyes, and the cup worked OK with the pink and neon yellow. I then tried these dyes with the microplastics and found that the pink worked best overall. Finally, I tested tap water and Wabash River water with the pink dye and found lots of microparticles that glowed in the river water. To wrap it up, I would like to have a service for people to bring their water to me so I could tell them if they had microplastics in it. That way they would know if they needed to clean up their water before using it!
Aneri Mehta | Elkhart Community Schools - Bristol, INGrade-6 Project Number- 110Title: Terrarium TemperView Project e-Portfolio--My project relates to global warming because temperature is a big part of the effect of global warming. This relates my project to Earth because a terrarium and Earth are both closed systems. Matter cannot escape or enter the glass or atmosphere, but light, heat, and energy can. If moss can decrease the temperature of the terrarium, then it could decrease the temperature of Earth, which can delay global warming. I took 3 glass containers, and I added 2 inches of decorative rocks at the bases of the jars. Then, I layered half an inch of activated charcoal on top. On top of that, I put soil that is 4 inches deep. After that, I took the sunset and gold dust succulents and planted it in a terrarium. In another terrarium, I layered the moss on top of the soil. I poured two cups of water in each of the terrariums. I stuck the mini thermometers to each of the terrariums. Taking the terrariums, I put them at a window that has a lot of sunlight. Finally, I measured and recorded the temperature data in the afternoon for 18 days. My conclusion is the moss terrarium decreased the environment’s temperature more than the soil and succulent terrariums because moss is able to decrease an environment‘s temperature by absorbing more carbon dioxide. The average temperature for the moss was 66.1, the soil temperature average was 69.3, and the average succulent temperature was 67.6. Therefore, I accept my hypothesis.
Makayla Evans | Zionsville West Middle School - Whitestown, INGrade-6 Project Number- 111Title: The Effect of Insulation on CoolingView Project e-Portfolio--Newtown’s law of cooling describes the rate of heat transfer by an object to its surrounds through heat radiation. Insulation, like the types in your home or water bottles, slow the rate of cooling by effecting the heat transfer constant in Newton’s law. In these experiments, different types of insulation (no insulation, fiberglass, cellulose, foam, and a custom solution) were tested for their ability to slow the rate of cooling of a warm object. I tested this on a small scall using hot water in a glass jar and on a larger scale by heating the air in a small wood and drywall constructed box. The change in temperature was measured over time with the jar or the box to observe the cooling. Fiberglass and cellulose out competed the other insulations and allowed the heat to be contained to keep the water and air warmer for longer. In all cases the rate of heat loss was consistent with Newton’s law relative to the difference in temperature over time. Future investigations can lead to finding cheaper, more eco-friendly insulation for our homes.
Ali Kalakeche | East Tipp Middle School - Lafayette, IndianaGrade-6 Project Number- 112Title: Sous-Vide Those Strawberries!View Project e-Portfolio--Strawberries are a delicious and nutritious snack, but they tend to develop mold quickly due to the rapid growth of Botrytis cinerea, a common mold. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of thermotherapy on prolonging the shelf-life of fresh strawberries. During the experiment, strawberries were submerged in hot water at 125 degrees Fahrenheit for varying durations of 30s, 60s, 90s, and 120s, while the control group was soaked in tap cold water at 70 degrees Fahrenheit for the same duration. All batches were dried and stored in airtight containers at room temperature in a dark area. The number of molded strawberries in each group, as well as the percentage of moldy areas on the strawberries, were recorded daily for a week. The results indicated that thermotherapy significantly delayed the molding process. By Day 3, 50% of the control group had molded, while hardly any strawberries in the treated groups showed any signs of mold. Additionally, over 50% of the strawberries treated for 30s or 120s looked edible by Day 6. These findings support the hypothesis that thermotherapy can extend the shelf-life of strawberries by eliminating mold spores on their surface. This discovery could potentially benefit both home consumers and food industries by reducing costs.
Aram Petrosyan | West Lafayette Intermediate School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-6 Project Number- 113Title: How Do Sounds Affect Brain Performance?View Project e-Portfolio--Have you ever heard something on the radio that feels just right, and you feel motivated to finish your work? This science experiment is based on that. In my science fair project, I will find out what sound improves your performance the most. This experiment may lead to sounds being played during tests, helping students focus on their work and achieve great grades. In this experiment, I will play four different sounds, such as white noise or Für Elise, while a participant is completing one of three tasks. All of the scores achieved on the tasks will be recorded, and the highest score will represent the best-performing sound. After hours of testing, the findings of the experiment show that white noise had the highest score, which was not what I expected. I predicted that classical music or songs with catchy lyrics would either calm or motivate the brain, increasing performance. White noise, however, managed to perform the best, even though none of the participants had white noise perform the best individually. The arithmetic test had even more shocking results, with annoying noises performing the best, which may be because the brain sends more energy to the frontal cortex in order for people to focus. Even with these limited results, we can say that these changes in performance are significant.
Jillian Hanna | West Lafayette Intermediate School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-6 Project Number- 114Title: Plants in MicrogravityView Project e-Portfolio--For my experiment I wanted to learn how microgravity affected plant growth. My hypothesis was that if I grow plants in microgravity then their roots will grow in a random direction because they don’t know which way is up and which way is down. To do my experiment I : First I will put 4 radish seeds into different petri dishes, all of them filled with agar. Then I will spin petri dishes Experiment A, B, C, and D vertically. Petri dishes Cantroled A, B, C, and D will be vertical on the ground not spinning. They will both be facing a window in our dining room. I will closely watch the seeds for 10 days. Everyday I will measure the root length and take a picture of all of the petri dishes. After 10 days I will take pictures of the petri dishes side by side. My hypothesis was supported. The roots of the spinning seeds grew in different directions, but one of the seedlings was so confused that instead of using the agar for nutrients it pulled itself out of it and attached it to the lid of the petri dish, which was closest to the light source. More of the controlled seeds germinated than the experiment seeds and controlled seeds also grew faster than the experiment seeds. Overall I am very happy with how my experiment turned out.
Joseph Zhang | West Lafayette Intermediate School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-6 Project Number- 115Title: Which Materials can Block a WiFi Signal the Best.View Project e-Portfolio--The purpose of the experiment is to find which materials can block wi-fi the best. For the procedure, I first downloaded the dBm tracker on my phone. Then, I put the router on a chair, got a twin chair, and put my phone on the chair with the dBm tracker. Lastly, I put each different material in front of the router. My hypothesis, if I use different types of materials to block wi-fi, then only the materials with water and metal will block the wi-fi signal because water and metal cause interference with the wi-fi, was supported. It was supported , because the aluminum foil(which is metal) did relatively well, while the human blocked the wi-fi the best because it had a lot of water.(the large container of water has less water.
Tao Bauchet | West Lafayette Intermediate School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-6 Project Number- 116Title: Truck Nose AerodynamicsView Project e-Portfolio--The purpose of this experiment was to identify the most aerodynamic truck nose design. Truck nose design is important because it affects how aerodynamic a truck can be. Aerodynamics means “the qualities of an object that affect how easily it is able to move through the air.” If a truck is more aerodynamic, then we will need less power to move the truck, which means we will conserve energy and emit less CO2 into the atmosphere. My overall hypothesis is that rounder nose shapes will make trucks more aerodynamic because the wind will move around the trucks more easily. Of the five nose shapes that I tested (i.e., cone, cone without corners, rectangle, rounded rectangle, and teardrop), I hypothesized that the teardrop shape is the most aerodynamic, and the rectangle shape is the least aerodynamic. I taped a one centimeter-marked sheet of paper on a table and placed a toy truck on it. Then I attached different noses and turned on a hair dryer to create wind to push the truck along the graded paper. The more the truck moved backwards meant the less aerodynamic the truck nose shape was. My hypothesis was supported. The three truck noses with rounder features (i.e., teardrop, cone, and cone without corners) were more aerodynamic than the two rectangular nose shapes. The truck with the teardrop nose moved back the least, which means it was the most aerodynamic shape.
Ada Wagner | Monroe Central Elem School - FARMLAND, INGrade-6 Project Number- 117Title: Super SoilView Project e-Portfolio--My project is about the yield of the soil and I am testing the ph, nitrogen, potash, and phosphorous of the different yields. My hypothesis was mostly correct. The above average yield soil had the best test results as a whole, but at the same time some things varied in the soil. My conclusion is that the yield can be accurate a lot of the times, but it is better most the time to do testing to know exactly how to fix it. If you want to not spend as much money on your field I would give it a try!
Piper Gregg | Elwood Community Middle School - Elwood, INGrade-6 Project Number- 118Title: Transformer EfficiencyView Project e-Portfolio--The reason I decided to do the science fair is because I wanted to improve my science fair performance from previous years. My big question is what transformer will have the most efficiency and the least efficiency. My hypothesis is that stainless steel core will be the least efficient because it doesn't have a good magnetic field. I made 4 different types of transformers. Then I tested them all identically and with the different building methods the results came out different.
William Landrum | Saint Mary Elementary School - Avilla, INGrade-6 Project Number- 119Title: Which Wood is Strongest?View Project e-Portfolio--Have you ever wondered which common wood is strongest? Now you will find out. My purpose of this project is to see if walnut, oak, or maple is strongest. My hypothesis was that walnut would hold the most weight because they are expensive. First, I got large branches and cut them into boards. Then, I put the wood on a ladder and hung weight from a hanger that was attached to the wood board. When it broke, I weighed the tote on a scale to see how much weight the board held. My hypothesis was correct and walnut held the most weight. Walnut 1 held 475 grams and walnut 2 held 557 grams. Maple 1 held 299 grams and maple 2 held 342 grams. Oak 1 held 225 grams and oak 2 held 341 grams. This project could help anyone that uses wood. I could improve this project by using more wood species.
Marissa Lehrman | Riverdale Elementary School - Spencerville, INGrade-6 Project Number- 120Title: Can You Spot the AI or is it too Sly?View Project e-Portfolio--The purpose of this project was to challenge teachers to identify paragraphs written by ChatGPT. Teachers would care about my experiment if they want to know whether they would be able to identify a paragraph as AI, or if plagiarism is not as easy to identify as previously thought. I thought that teachers could accurately spot the AI generated paragraphs. Accurate meaning correct at least 50% of the time. For my experiment, I typed ten paragraphs, five fiction, five nonfiction, to put up against AI generated paragraphs, which I generated after I finished typing the paragraphs that I wrote. After all of my paragraphs were matched to AI paragraphs of the same topic, I found teachers to participate in my experiment. After teachers completed the survey, I analyzed my results. In my experiment, I changed whether the paragraph was generated by AI or a student. The teachers took the same survey, the paragraphs were on the same topic, had similar characters, and they used sixth grade vocabulary. My results supported my hypothesis. I thought that teachers would be able to identify the paragraphs as AI, which they did, 58% of the time. The teachers identified fiction paragraphs more accurately then the nonfiction paragraphs, fiction paragraphs were identified 67% of the time, compared to 48% for nonfiction paragraphs. My project might have worked better if I had specified the subject that the teacher taught. Science teachers might do better with nonfiction paragraphs, while fiction might be better for English teachers.
Pearl Slentz | Butler Elementary School - Butler, IndianaGrade-6 Project Number- 121Title: Bright or Dark?View Project e-Portfolio--My project is about testing luminol at different temperatures to see if there is a difference in the luminol when it reacts. The luminol will be reacting to horseradish because it is a substance for blood, saliva, or bodily fluids. It is important because if a crime scene person needed to use luminol on a crime they need to know at what temperature it needs to be to get it the brightest or darkest glow. My problem is does the temperature of luminol affect how bright or dark it becomes when it reacts? The procedures are first to cut the carpet into squares then I need to label each square with the temperature that the luminol will be and the test numbers like test 1, test 2, and so on and each test has 10 trials that I have to do. Next, I need to rub the horseradish root on the carpet squares put dioxide water into the container that had the luminol mixture in it then shake it to form the luminol substance. Then I need to put the luminol on the carpet with the horseradish when it turns blue then I will take pictures of each test and trial. The last step I need to do is to take the data and turn it into charts. Then print pictures and data and make a board. MY hypothesis was if the temperature of luminol is affecting the brightness, then the light will be darker or brighter because the luminol produces a stronger glow in higher temperatures and a softer glow at lower temperatures, and the reaction that produces the glow is faster at a higher temperature and slower at a lower temperature which makes it a brighter or darker glow. Also, my data showed that the colder temperature of luminol was greater than the room temperature and hot temperature and all of the temperatures were 80.2, 65.6, and 52.8 Fahrenheit so that means that my hypothesis was not supported by my data because I said that the hotter the temperature would have a brighter glow and cold and room temperature would be lower. But the colder temperature was brighter than the others. My data probably turned out this was because I could have put a little more horseradish on others and I might have had the temperature different than the first test I did. One of my concerns is that I didn't have the camera at the same height as the other ones or I put too much or too little horseradish on the carpet squares. Some other things that I could change is that I needed to check the temperature of the luminol every time before I put it on the carpet squares. One thing that I learned was that if you had this job it would probably be pretty hard to get the temperature at the same temperature every time you used it. Also in real life, you use it to find blood stains if the person that put them there cleaned it up the luminol will still detect it on the ground.
Emily Scoville | Butler Elementary School - Butler, IndianaGrade-6 Project Number- 122Title: Text ConfusionView Project e-Portfolio-- The problem in my experiment was is it harder to read from a computer screen or from paper people should care because some people want to know whether it is harder to read from a computer screen or paper. My hypothesis was I think it is easier to read from paper because your eyes aren't looking at a screen the whole time. First I will type random words on the computer. Then I will do the same thing but with different words then when I am done I will get 1 person and test them on the computer screen then I will do the same thing but with the paper finally I will time everybody for 30 seconds while they are trying to memorize as many words as possible. My results show that the people I tested read off of the paper better than the computer screen. Most of the people I tested memorized at least 4/15 words or 7/15 words. My hypothesis was correct because I thought people read easier off of paper rather than a computer screen. The reason why I thought that reading off of paper is easier because when you're reading off of a computer screen all you're doing is just staring at a screen and if you look at something like a computer screen it can damage your eye’s
Lydia Deckard , Nevaeh Gorin | Fishers Junior High School - Fishers, IndianaGrade-7 Project Number- 150Title: Want to make the biggest bon-fire?View Project e-Portfolio--Can the density of wood affect the height of a burning flame? If the density of wood is increased, then the height of the flame will decrease, because the denser the wood, the less oxygen that is able to seep through the wood and fire needs oxygens to grow and survive. If the density of wood is increased, then the height of the flame will increase, because the denser the wood, the more oxygen that is able to seep through the wood and fire doesn’t need oxygen to grow and survive. First, we started off by gathering wood samples, then we gathered things to help the fire grow including newspaper and kindling, next we put the seven types of wood around the fire pit. We lite the fire and used the metal prongs to lift up the wood samples to measure the fire from the bottom to the top of the flame. After we took seven measurements of each type of wood, we put out the the fire. After we did our experiment, we found out that Black Walnut and Black Locust were the best density, that density was medium to high density. An error we came to is that flame heights aren’t always exact and that the weather conditions and locations could affect the flame. Our hypothesis was not supported because we came to the conclusion that medium to high density woods have a better combination of everything creative a stronger and bigger flame. This happens when there is a medium to high density wood because there is more substance and mass for the fire to rely on, which leads to a greater a pit of energy for the combustion process.
Joshua Alcantara | Sycamore School - Carmel, INGrade-7 Project Number- 151Title: Aloft! Airfoil Aerodynamics: Predicting Relative Airfoil Lift During Wind Tunnel Testing With Laminar FlowView Project e-Portfolio--The Purpose of this experiment was to determine how the maximum thickness of a cambered airfoil affects lift during wind tunnel testing with laminar flow. Hypothesis: Increasing the maximum thickness of a cambered airfoil will generate more lift during wind tunnel testing with laminar flow. Null Hypothesis: There is no correlation between the maximum thickness of a cambered airfoil and lift. Procedure: Use CAD to design a set of 5 cambered airfoils with varying maximum thickness increasing in 5 mm intervals (20, 25, 30, 35, 40 mm). 3D print the set of 5 cambered airfoils and an airfoil stand. Build a homemade wind tunnel from a cardboard tube with a laminar flow filter made of jumbo straws. Install a ventilator fan and a recessed digital scale in the wind tunnel. Run the fan and test each airfoil on the scale in the wind tunnel. Weight loss = Lift. Weight gain = Downforce. Results: Increasing the maximum thickness of a cambered airfoil generates more lift during wind tunnel testing with laminar flow. Conclusion: The results support the hypothesis and prove that increasing the maximum thickness of a cambered airfoil generates more lift during wind tunnel testing with laminar flow. This is important for aerodynamics and energy efficiency.
Avantika Kudiyirikkal Anil | Castle North Middle School - Newburgh, INGrade-7 Project Number- 152Title: Rethinking Ripening: Unveiling the Science Behind the Yellow TransformationView Project e-Portfolio--The ripening process of climacteric fruits like bananas is enhanced by the release of the gaseous hormone ethylene. This experiment was focused on finding which technique can be used to slow the release of ethylene gas in order to increase the shelf life of bananas. Six techniques were tested along with a control to slow down the release of ethylene gas during the ripening process. Four of these included wrapping the stem of bananas in fabric, paper, aluminum foil, or plastic film. Two of them involved immersing the stem of a banana in naturally occurring ethylene absorbers like zeolite and charcoal. A visual scale with color index numbers was developed in order to measure the ripening rate of bananas over a period of time. The results of this experiment showed that zeolite ended up increasing the shelf life the most. These results can be used to prevent climacteric fruit waste in households and grocery stores.
Libbyanne Gansman | St Philip School - Evansville, Indiana Grade-7 Project Number- 153Title: Which Drink is the Worst for Your Teeth?View Project e-Portfolio--Which Drink Is the Worst For Your Teeth?I did this experiment because I wanted people to realize that common and popular drinks can be very bad for your teeth.Also,when people drink certain beverages they do not realize what risks they are taking for their teeth.I think this will improve what beverages people will want to drink. For my procedure I weighed each tooth,took before pictures of each tooth,put each tooth be put into its own beverage and sit for about 2 weeks, After 2 weeks weigh each tooth again,take a after picture to compare the before pictures. The worst drink for your teeth is lemonade because the tooth that was soaked in lemonade lost .23g of structure and also had lost the most structure.
Madison Cooper | Mount Vernon Jr High School - Mt. Vernon, INGrade-7 Project Number- 154Title: Beneficial BlockersView Project e-Portfolio--The idea behind this project was to determine which type of window covering would block out the most radiant heat from the Sun. There are many options to choose from for the windows in your home. I utilized a heat lamp and set it next to a window to reenact a hot summer day. From there, I used three different types of window coverings in my experiment (a cellular fabric shade, a vinyl blind, and a pleated paper shade). Research led me to find that cellular shades were a popular pick in most households because of their amazing insulation. My hypothesis was that cellular shades would block the most radiant heat. After the experiment, data showed that the most efficient window covering I tested was the cellular fabric shade. The least effective was the pleated paper shade. The cellular shades reduced the surface temperature by 15.8%, while the pleated paper shades only reduced it by 8.5%. Knowing cellular shades can reduce the amount of energy used to cool your home is information that can help when choosing window coverings.
Chase VanderMeer | Kankakee Valley Middle School - Demotte , INGrade-7 Project Number- 155Title: A Cool Breeze Of ElectricityView Project e-Portfolio--In response to the energy demand challenges posed by warmer climates, this project explores the integration of wind turbines with air conditioning units to harness lost wind energy and enhance energy efficiency The experimental setup involves constructing a frame using PVC rubber bands magnets, and screws reassembling and upside down with centimeter markings along the longer part and a designated spot for an animator at the shoreline Starting from the top inside of the air conditioning unit when speeds are recorded at zero and incremented by one centimeter repeated to the determine the height of the maximum wind speed record wind speeds that are then converted into quantify energy production. This experimental approach aims to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of capturing wind energy from air conditioning units offering insights into potential energy generation and promoting grid stability during peak demand periods. I leveraging renewable resources and innovative technologies The project contributes to advancing sustainable energy solutions and resilience and energy infrastructure This research highlights the potential of integrating off-grid power sources to reduce dependence on conventional grids fostering energy conservation practices and environmental sustainabilityThis project underscores the importance of harnessing untapped energy sources and innovative solutions to address energy challenges and regions prone to great overloading ultimately paving the way towards a more sustainable and resilient energy future.
Salvador Mejia-Santos | Frankfort Middle School - Frankfort, INGrade-7 Project Number- 156Title: Magnetic NatureView Project e-Portfolio--I am testing to see if magnetic fields affect plant growth. My prediction is that the plants with the magnets won’t grow as well because the magnets will pull the iron in the soil away from the plant, meaning it won’t grow or eat as much. Also if the plant has food, the magnetic fields will change the direction of its regular growth, which will hurt the roots and will make those plants smaller compared to plants growing in soil without the presence of a strong magnetic field. To test, into one container, add soil ⅓ of the way full. Then place the five magnets on top of that soil. Cover that layer of magnets with soil for the remaining ⅔ of the container. For the other container (control), just fill it completely with soil. Plant 6 radish seeds on the surface of each container, and make sure they are well spaced from each other. Place the containers under a constant overhead light to provide heat and light as the plants grow, and water (120 mL) them weekly while also measuring the growth. My hypothesis was mostly correct. Most of the radish plants that were exposed to the magnetic field did not grow as much as the control ones (only one of the magnetic group grew well). This shows that the magnet would not let the radishes grow as needed because the magnets take iron away from the plants, and without iron they don’t grow well and become iron-deficient.
Logan Bernstein | Burris Laboratory School - Yorktown , INGrade-7 Project Number- 157Title: What food do planaria like best, the beyond impossible decision View Project e-Portfolio--For this project I studied which foods planarians liked more. These foods consisted of ground beef, ground turkey, liver, beyond beef, impossible beef, and sausage and we used no meat as our control. Before I started working with the planarians they were eating liver, which is what led me to my hypothesis that the planarians would like the liver more. To do this experiment we divided up the foods into groups of three and did three replicates of each experiment. Group one was ground beef, liver, no meat, and beyond beef. Group two was ground beef, liver, no meat, and impossible beef. Group three was no meat, ground beef, liver, and sausage. I conducted this experiment because I wanted to see how they reacted to different foods besides their usual liver. Not only that, but I wanted to see if the planarian could distinguish between animal and plant based meat. In conclusion I found that ground beef was the most liked food followed closely by sausage. They did not like the plant based meat. Although they like sausage and ground beef more, liver is a more consistent laboratory diet, and thus is better for experimental reproducibility.
Isaac Hefty | DeKalb High School - Auburn, INGrade-7 Project Number- 158Title: Determining if Increased Plant Population Can Keep Up with the Global PopulationView Project e-Portfolio--The purpose of the research is to increase green bean production by increasing population from the standard two inch spacing to solid seeding. This research was chosen because our world leaders are predicting a food shortage. (Shatara, 2022) Green beans are easy to grow and the third most popular garden crop. The food chain has not been reliable since COVID 19. By increasing yield in the same area would help families be more self-reliant. This would help the agriculture industry by producing more food locally. Gardeners producing a surplus of beans could sell them, give them to a neighbor or a food bank. The Procedure (how student researcher conducted the study) was set-up in two phases. Phase 1 used twelve eight-quart Miracle-Gro soil bags. Three repetitions for 7, 14, 28 and 56 green bean seeds were planted. This step was repeated in the garden. Data was collected as to height, number of nodes and beans produced. The results (also what other researchers found) showed the higher populations produced the best yield in both phases. The conclusion was by planting higher populations gardeners would be more self-reliant, thus, helping the agriculture industry maintain the food chain.
Alexandria Baumgartner | DeKalb Middle School - Auburn, INGrade-7 Project Number- 159Title: Wings and ThingsView Project e-Portfolio--The topic I chose was finding out if different wing shapes and sizes affected their ability to lift. According to my hypothesis, I believed that changing the size and shape of a wing will improve its overall lifting efficiency. I figured that different angles and different shapes and sizes will affect how well the plane will lift. For my experiment, I created a wind tunnel using foam board and a fan. I made a fuselage out of foam that the wing designs attached to. The fuselage was positioned in the center of the wind tunnel and rode along a vertical string that was secured at the bottom and top of the wind tunnel to ensure consistency in lift measurement and positioning. I made paper wings out of cardstock. I also made a tail wing to stabilize the aircraft and prevent it from spinning in the wind tunnel. I attached the tail wing with toothpicks and hot glue to the back of the fuselage. For each wing design, I turned the fan on and observed the model plane lift off. I used a clothespin to mark the lift height. I then turned the fan off and used a tape measure to measure the overall lift height and recorded the results into a spreadsheet. I tested each wing design 5 times. I found that the Airfoil (single wing) - 8.5” wing did the best overall, lifting at an average of around 4.5”.
Mikhail Nosov | Delta Middle School - Muncie, INGrade-7 Project Number- 160Title: Freezing and Melting of LiquidsView Project e-Portfolio--Everyone knows that water is vital for all life on our planet. Water has many uses including dissolving objects and providing food to plants. Every living thing needs water: humans, animals, birds, plants, and microorganisms. If there is no water there will be no life on Earth. Scientists continue to study the unique properties of water and discover the most amazing facts about it. In this regard, the purpose of my research was to study the speeds of freezing and melting of various liquids based on. In experiments water, salt water, orange juice, milk, vegetable oil, engine oil, Coca-Cola and antifreeze fluid were checked. Freezing was carried out in a freezer at temperature 0F/-18C. But melting was carried out in the room (temperature 60F/16C). Results show that different liquids have different speeds of freezing and melting. My hypothesis was confirmed. The water, orange juice, Coca-Cola, milk, and antifreeze fluid froze. But the oils remained liquid, only clouded and salt water didn't freeze completely. Frozen water with salt on it melts faster than usual ice but slower than salt water. Water with oil on it froze slower than usual water. Studying these processes is necessary to improve our lives (production of equipment, in the fight against icy roads and food storage) and warn about harmful consequences for our planet (for example, the spilling of oil on the surface of the ocean). That is why the study of the properties of liquids is very important for the everyday life of humans.
Tyler Rodenbeck | Saint Charles Borromeo School - Fort Wayne, INGrade-7 Project Number- 161Title: Sour PowerView Project e-Portfolio--The purpose of the project was to find which candy is the most acidic and learn how it could affect the teeth and tongue. I became interested in this topic because I had a bad experience after eating a bag of Sour Skittles, so I wanted to investigate the acidity in sour candy. My hypothesis was that I believe that if I test the acidity by using a pH scale of different sour candies, then Toxic Waste will be the most acidic. I tested this by having three pieces of each type of lemon flavored sour candy. I used three of each, Sweet Tarts, Skittles, Sour Skittles, Sour Patch Kids, and Toxic Waste. I labeled twelve clear cups, three for each kind of candy. One piece of candy was placed in each plastic cup. Water was heated to one hundred fifty degrees Fahrenheit. I poured one third cup of water into a clear cup and set a timer for ten minutes. After ten minutes, I used a pH strip to test the pH of the water and dissolved candy. I found the number rank by matching the color with my strip to the color on the pH scale and using the number next to the color on the scale. I repeated this for each candy two more times. I found Toxic Waste to be the most acidic having a pH of 1 on the scale. I learned from my research that a pH of one is very acidic and can cause damage to the teeth and tongue. My hypothesis was found to be correct. Toxic Waste was the most acidic of the candy that I tested.
Elijah Petry | NE Region Home Schools - HUNTINGTON, INGrade-7 Project Number- 162Title: A.R.M.: Automatic Robotic ArmView Project e-Portfolio--I researched automated robotic arms online. Then I found an engineer named Eben Kouao, who had built a robotic arm and had videos, instructions, material lists, and digital print resources for the 3-D printing. So I studied his work and prepared for the build myself. This was going to be a chance to learn how a robotic arm works, from scratch. First I printed all the parts needed, using an Elegoo Jupiter SE printer. I also ordered motors, wires, batteries and additional items needed for the arm. Once all of the pieces were printed I then began attaching all of the servo motors. After this, I began constructing the arm. Afterwards, I began constructing the baseplate. After this, I began hooking up all of the circuitry. After that, I programmed the Elegoo Uno, which is the brains of my project, to make the arm perform certain tasks.
Eden Brown | Fort Wayne NE Harvest CC Community - Hunertown, INGrade-7 Project Number- 163Title: Put Down RootsView Project e-Portfolio--Erosion costs the world $400 billion dollars per year. Some farmers have taken to planting cover-crops believing that this will help reduce the soil from eroding away. I wanted to test this theory. I took six bread pans and weighed a pound of dirt into each one. Three pans each had a different seed disbursement rate. Three pans had no seeds as a control. I used radish seeds because they are a quick growing root vegetable. I provided each pan with the same amount of sunlight and water, then waited until the majority of the seedlings grew to be 10cm tall. To experiment I placed each pan on a two-inch tilt, cut off the short end, and poured two cups of water upon it. I waited two minutes for everything to settle. Then I carefully strained and weighed the dirt that eroded out. My results supported my hypothesis that plants do help to reduce erosion. My control pans each had almost half of their dirt erode. Each pan with seeds had less than an ounce of dirt erode. If put into large scale practice, this could greatly reduce the amount of erosion that the world spends on erosion yearly. A project variation I would like to try is whether there is a threshold of too many seeds. Could too many roots overcrowding the soil potentially start to cause more erosion? It seems farmers are right to plant cover-crops because the dirt clings to roots, preventing water from carrying it away.
Zane Faulstich | Canterbury School (PK-08) - LaOtto, IndianaGrade-7 Project Number- 164Title: Garden Taking Paper MakingView Project e-Portfolio--Paper is a technology that has evolved for millenia. But that technology might not be completely perfect. Are the North American invasive plants usable for paper and if so, then which one works the best? Paper has evolved for millenia and the process has gone from the handmade rag and fiber papers to the highly specialized factory chemical process we have today. That said, forests are being cut down at an alarming rate but some people have found out how to make recycled paper and garden paper. If paper is made out of queen anne’s lace, dill, ornamental grass, and small trees and measure their strength against weights of different sizes, durability against folding multiple times, their writing capability by writing on them and seeing how far away one can real it from, and their ability to retain sharpie ink and seeing how it spreads, then, I predict that the wood pulp paper will do the best because there had to be a point to the trend of using wood pulp for paper. There are many materials needed to make paper and those include the original fibers, containers, water, scales, net bags, a crockpot, soda ash, pH strips, safety material, a mold & deckle, a blender, boards, and sponges and other drying things. For the testing, a sharpie, scissors, a pencil, a scale, a holding object, tape, flat surfaces, and quarters are needed. The procedures start with collecting and cutting up queen anne’s lace, dill, miscanthus, and mulberry and then go to soaking the fibers in tap water, and eventually in an alkaline solution. Then comes the rinsing, blending, and pouring of the fibers into a large container where the mold and deckle are used to make the sheets and they are dried. The testing includes the bleeding test with a sharpie, the writing test testing how far an e can be seen on it, the strength test where quarters are stacked on it until it gives out, and the durability test to see how much it withstands folding. For each test, there were different results. The bleeding test didn’t show many trends except for that the dill did the best. The other three showed definite trends in which the queen anne’s lace had the more expected performance, the ornamental grass failed at everything, and the wood excelled. The dill was all over the place in the different tests doing well in the strength test, failing in the durability test, and doing decently well in the writing test. Overall the wood did the best. Through all the data and averages my hypothesis was partially accepted. The wood excelled in every test with averages like 3.5m in the writing test, 130.5g in the strength test, and 8% broken in the durability test. The part that wasn’t accepted was the ornamental grass part, with averages like 0m in the writing test, 9.5g in the strength test, and 90.5% broken in the durability test. There were, though, some things that might have affected the results. Those included the wood getting soaked longer because of its hardness, another batch of wood pulp having to be made, the ornamental grass getting in the way of everything, the thickness of the paper, and the luck of the batch. If this experiment were to be done again, there would have to be a more suitable workspace and more reliability and less spontaneity. Overall this was a great experiment that could affect the world.
Gracelyn Schafer | Carroll Middle School - Fort Wayne, INGrade-7 Project Number- 165Title: Adulting 101View Project e-Portfolio--For my project I created a survey to answer a couple of questions that I wanted to know. The question I was most interested in is: at what age did you decide to do your current career? The other questions are: What is your gender; did you attend college or trade school; if you went to college what the highest level of education is you completed; At what age did you decide to do your current career; if you attended college or trade school, are you currently working in the field that you went to school for. I found out that the average age is 22.5 years old. The average person usually chooses their career path before college, at the age of 18 or 19. The average is 22.5 because some people changed their careers at an older age in life, so it brings the age up.
Madeleine Barroso-Gutierrez | Saint Patrick School - Terre Haute , IndianaGrade-7 Project Number- 166Title: Branded ElectrolytesView Project e-Portfolio--In my science fair project i tested the amount of electrolytes in different sport drinks. Electrolytes are essential minerals that are very important to have in our bodies. Having a lot of electrolytes in our bodies may seem good, by having too many electrolytes in our bodies can also be harmful to our bodies. In my experiment I used a digital multi-meter, a tiny straw piece, copper wire, and the sport drinks. I used 8 different sport drinks; Powerade Zero Sugar, Powerade, Pedailyte, Gatorade, Gatorade Zero Sugar, Body Armor, Good Sport, and Prime Hydration. All of these drinks were fruit punch flavored to keep the variables controlled. I ran three trials on each drink. I tested all off the drinks one time and made sure to thoroughly clean the straw and copper wire in between each trail. I then tested them all 2 more times and did the same thing that I did on the first trial. I collected the data and found that the brand "Good Sport" had the highest conductivity which is proportional to the amount of electrolytes. I also found that Gatorade Zero Sugar has the least amount of conductivity. This proved that my hypothesis was incorrect.
Isaiah Hellmann | Saint Patrick School - Terre Haute, IndianaGrade-7 Project Number- 167Title: Gotta Go FarView Project e-Portfolio--
Eleanor Niemier | Schmucker Middle School - Granger, INGrade-7 Project Number- 168Title: How does landscape runoff impact stream water quality? Evaluating how various landscaping substances affect water quality and how residents' knowledge contributes to the threat and solutionView Project e-Portfolio--Landscape runoff can introduce excess organic matter and nutrients into local streams. A three-phase study was conducted to understand the impact of landscape substances (leaves, grass clippings, ice melt, fertilizer) on chemical water quality indicators (Phase1), how varying amounts of organic matter (leaves) effect stream water health (Phase2), and residents' willingness to change landscaping behavior to prevent excess runoff from entering waterways (Phase3). Hypothesis: (1) landscaping runoff will degrade water quality, and grass clippings will have the greatest negative effect; (2) there will be a negative relationship between the amount of leaves and chemical water quality; (3) residents will be willing to change behavior when aware of threats that excess runoff poses to water quality. In Phase1, two samples of each substance and a control were tested. Water quality indicators were measured on days 1,7 and 14 including BOD, DO% saturation, orthophosphate, pH, Nitrate, and turbidity. In Phase2, varying amounts of maple leaves were added to stream water samples (tests were conducted on days 1 and 7). In Phase3, a survey about landscaping behaviors and awareness of runoff impact was completed by Michiana residents (n=88). There is a negative relationship between landscape runoff and stream water health; all four substances caused a decline in chemical indicators of water quality versus the control. Leaves were most detrimental to water quality (even small amounts can disrupt an aquatic habitat). Residents are willing to change landscaping behavior to prevent runoff from entering local waterways once educated about threats of runoff on stream health.
Cassandra Soon | Central Catholic Jr-Sr High School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-7 Project Number- 169Title: Invasive Species Detection by Artificial IntelligenceView Project e-Portfolio--This experiment detects invasive plant species through artificial intelligence (AI.) The objective was to identify and alert the user to harmful plants for removal. I collected images and trained AI to determine 5 native and 5 invasive species. I then wrote Arduino code to signal the classification when the AI sees a plant through the camera. In the future, this technology could be used to help eliminate damaging species to local ecosystems. To make it easier for field use, the program can be used on smartphones where it will determine plant types and have a separate Arduino alert system.
Amy Zhang | Schmucker Middle School - Mishawaka, INGrade-7 Project Number- 170Title: "React and Learn": Exploring the Fascinating World of Chemical ReactionsView Project e-Portfolio--The project aimed to investigate chemical reactions and their varying levels of reactivity and observable characteristics. Four experiments were conducted to compare and contrast the reactions of different chemicals under specific conditions. The experiments included Fizz, Lava, Woil, and Elephant Toothpaste. The results showed that different chemicals exhibit various levels of reactivity, and their reactions may vary depending on several factors such as the chemical composition of the reactants, the concentration, and the temperature. The study can be helpful in understanding and predicting chemical reactions in various settings, such as industrial processes, environmental studies, and health sciences.
Margot Rich , Abigail Pickut | Lincoln Junior High School - , Grade-7 Project Number- 171Title: What is the most effective way to clean an oil spill? (In the ocean)View Project e-Portfolio-- For our experiment, we’re answering the question: what’s the most effective way to remove oil from water; skimming, absorption, or filtration? After researching, we hypothesized that using spoons to skim the oil would work best. But to test this we also used sponges and a homemade filter to remove 2 tablespoons of oil from 2 cups of water. To do this, we set out bowls with water and oil poured in the middle. To start the process, we set a 10 minute timer to use the materials, closely mirroring what we could do in real life. We put removed oil and water into a measuring cup so we could take pictures and easily measure our results, and repeated that 3 times with each material to avoid outliers. Once we were done with the experiment, we put the data in a table; then, we were clearly able to see that the filtration station was the winner; since it removed all oil and almost no water very quickly. This was surprising because it didn’t match our hypothesis, so we did a little digging. After a bit of research, we found out that natural cotton has a waxy coating that absorbs oil but repels water. Although our work was far from perfect and didn’t discover anything new, it’s still important to keep researching and bringing attention to problems in our environment. Oil spills at sea are extremely dangerous and we hope we were able to bring a little more support to this cause.
Leif Speer | Honey Creek Middle School - Terre Haute, IndianaGrade-7 Project Number- 172Title: Does a Dendroclimatic Reconstruction of the Southern Hemisphere Show the "Hockey Stick Curve"?View Project e-Portfolio--I created a climate reconstruction of the southern hemisphere making use of publicly available tree-ring records going back 1,700 years, with the intent of seeing whether southern hemisphere tree-ring records show significant warming in recent history, as northern hemisphere tree-ring records do. I used methods based in part on past northern hemisphere reconstructions conducted by Mann, Bradley, and Hughes in 1999 “The Hockey Stick Curve” and a more recent northern hemisphere reconstruction conducted by Wilson et al. in 2016. I downloaded previously dated chronologies from the International Tree-Ring Databank (ITRDB), used the program COFECHA to check the quality of the dating, applied an age-dependent spline in the program ARSTAN to remove age-related growth trends, and ran KNMI Climate Explorer to identify spatial correlations to Hadley CRU temperature records. This is the first southern hemisphere reconstruction of its kind, in part because of the scarcity of tree-ring records for the southern hemisphere (only about 270 in the entire hemisphere, compared to approximately 5000 in the northern hemisphere). Although tree-ring records in the southern hemisphere in the ITRDB only come up to about 2011, I found 0.4 degrees Celsius of warming in the past century (p < 0.001).
Landon Crawn , Judah Minster | Honey Creek Middle School - Terre Haute, IndianaGrade-7 Project Number- 173Title: Major Thoughts on a Minor InquiryView Project e-Portfolio--Several organizations and universities have shown consistent claims, which in short mean music written in minor keys is sad and major keys are happy. Our tests will ultimately determine if this assumption is true, or if it is a false generalization. For our experiment, our manipulated variable was the key signature that the pieces were written in (major/minor). We used relative minor key signatures, meaning the amount of flats/sharps remains the same, but they are arranged in various whole-step and half-step patterns. We recorded the audio from us playing it. Then, we surveyed 109 people on how the different pieces appealed to their emotions. To keep the integrity of the experiment, we didn’t reveal the key signatures of the different renditions. This was so participants remained impartial and didn’t immediately prescribe labels to the pieces just from prior knowledge of the subject. We could determine that the manipulated variable had a cause-and-effect relationship with the emotional responses of the participants. Furthermore, about seventy percent of the participants perceived the relative minor pieces to have a negative sound and the relative major pieces to be positive.
Adam Sisson , Jacob Kieffner | Castle North Middle School - Newburg, IN, IndianaGrade-8 Project Number- 200Title: Magnetic MadnessView Project e-Portfolio--As cars continue to pollute the environment day by day we need a cleaner, more environmentally friendly way to traverse our towns. According to EPA.gov, a typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. So in order to explore a new, cleaner way of travel, we tested maglev trains. In this experiment we tested how much force was needed just to move the train a generous amount of distance to understand the levitating capabilities of the maglev train system. We made a miniature maglev train and track with a method to hit the train with a controllable weight, which we could increase and decrease. We then varied the weights hitting the maglev train and measured the distance it travelled. We also tested different train weights and how far each would travel compared to the others. After our experiment we learned that just a force of 30g makes a train that weighs 38g go an average of 38.33 inches, a train that weighs 63g goes an average of 6.11 inches, and a third train that weighs 114g goes an average of 4.78 inches. Our hypothesis that changing the weight hitting the train would increase the distance the train travelled was correct as each increase in weight increased how far each train travelled. This experiment showed how only little amounts of force could make a maglev train travel so far, in a much cleaner and faster way than a car ever could.
Rohith Nuthakki | Indianapolis Home Schools - Carmel, INGrade-8 Project Number- 201Title: W-eye: An Automated Wound Monitoring And Classification AppView Project e-Portfolio-- 8 million people globally have wounds, including 2% of the US with up to 100Million in Medicare costs. It can be quite difficult even for medical professionals to determine if the wound is infected or not. Infected wounds can present not only with pus but also as increased pain, friable granulation tissue, delayed wound healing beyond expectation, wound breakdown or foul odor. Non-infected wounds can be sloughy, wet or red. Infected wounds need immediate antibiotics and if not getting better, surgery or intravenous antibiotics. Non-infected wounds need regular dressing changes and removal of dead tissue. Currently the only confirmation of an infection in a chronic wound is: 1. Wound looks worse and patient feels worse with no other problems contributing 2. Wound swabs/culture show infection causing bacteria 3. Blood tests show increased white blood cells or inflammatory markers. A lightweight pre-trained deep convolutional model, MobileNet V2 was chosen for its ability to run on low compute phones. It was trained on a public dataset1 with 210 infected vs 264 infected wound labelled photos. It was then again trained on Dataset 2 which consists of 300 photos of a simulated worsening wound. This triple trained W-eye model achieved 92% accuracy in differentiating infected vs non infected wounds and was even able to identify worsening wound that needs attention, all deployed on a web app on any android or iPhone or laptop. Models similar to W-eye can also be used to classify and raise concern for worsening wounds based on temperature/humidity/volatile gasses, pressure measured by a potential sensor wound bandage/dressing which can then trigger taking a photo. This W-eye model can decrease the need for medical provider in-person monitoring, thereby decreasing healthcare worker burnout and possibly addressing health care worker shortages. It can decrease the cost of overall wound care. It prevents delay in diagnosing, or missing complications such as infections or wound falling apart after surgery (dehiscence). It gives peace of mind to patient and is free!
Zaina Nasir | Yorktown Middle School - Muncie, IndianaGrade-8 Project Number- 202Title: Liquid Gold: Greywater Purification Through Aquatic Plants and Natural Filters View Project e-Portfolio--The project explores an eco-friendly and accessible approach to greywater (e.g. laundry water) management and use through the implementation of natural filters and aquatic plants. The study investigates the potential of harnessing natural filters to treat greywater for reuse. Aquatic plants are known for their ability to decontaminate dirty water and it is hypothesized that their incorporation alongside natural filters would cleanse greywater. Two experiments were conducted to show the importance of natural filters in purifying greywater. The first experiment purified the greywater through a multi-layered filtration system after which it was transferred to two different aquatic plants. In the second experiment, two other aquatic plants were directly put in the unfiltered greywater. The greywater was tested at regular intervals for harmful levels of pH, hardness, total chlorine, sodium chloride, and total alkalinity. In both experiments, the levels of the pH, chlorine, sodium chloride, and total alkalinity levels were significantly reduced. In conclusion, the experiment demonstrates the feasibility of incorporating aquatic plants and natural filters as an eco-friendly and accessible way for greywater treatment which could promote water reuse and environmental sustainability. The findings can be used in developing countries, residential, and commercial places. As water needs become a growing problem globally, the use of natural solutions promotes a practical and sustainable approach to water conservation.
Sophie Xu | Jackson Creek Middle School - Bloomington, INGrade-8 Project Number- 203Title: Telehealth: A Friend or Foe? A Novel Analysis of the Impact of Telehealth on Patients, Healthcare Providers, and SocietyView Project e-Portfolio--A primary goal of healthcare is to help everyone get the healthcare services they need. However, a major challenge in achieving the goal is that patients do not know their medical condition and need for medical treatment, and it is inconvenient and costly to see doctors. Telehealth is believed to solve this healthcare problem by screening patients remotely to determine their condition and need for medical treatment. Does telehealth solve the healthcare problem or create new problems? In this research, I build a novel mathematical model to analyze the impact of telehealth on patients, healthcare providers, and society. I find that telehealth can improve the match between patients and medical treatment only if it is sufficiently precise or if patients' transportation cost of seeing doctors is in a medium range. Otherwise, telehealth does more harm than good, and healthcare providers should not offer telehealth even if it is costless.
Zion Ogundare | Otter Creek Middle School - Terre Haute, INGrade-8 Project Number- 204Title: Resistance and RespirationView Project e-Portfolio--For my science fair project this year, I built a system that provides visual feedback about belly and chest breathing. I hypothesized that if I built this system, it would help to improve users’ relative amounts of thoracic and abdominal breathing. To do this, I built two sensors out of a conductive cord and nylon strap. These sensors were connected to a circuit I created and measured the resistance/analogRead on the conductive cord when stretched. I used the sensor on volunteers to gather data on the relative amounts of chest and abdominal resistance when respiration. After conducting trials with the volunteers, I proved my hypothesis correct by showing that 2 of the 3 volunteers had improved their belly breathing patterns.
McKinley Fisher | Otter Creek Middle School - Terre Haute, IndianaGrade-8 Project Number- 205Title: Cracking Ciphers with CodingView Project e-Portfolio-- My project is cracking ciphers with coding. In this project I will be testing if longer pieces of text or shorter pieces of text are easier to decrypt using my coded program. The program I created looks at the letters in each word of the text and matches words with the same pattern in a dictionary of 45,000 English words. Then it uses the words it found to create a list of every possible letter each of the letters could be. It repeats this with every word in the text. Once it’s done some percentage of the letters have been decrypted. If my program tries to decrypt longer and shorter pieces of text, then the longer pieces of text will be easier to decrypt. This is my hypothesis and I’ve concluded after doing this experiment that my hypothesis was correct. When looking at the percentage of letters decrypted using my program versus the word count of each piece of text on a graph you can see a trendline. This trendline shows a steady increase in the percentage of letters decrypted as the word count increases. As a result of this project I have learned about cybersecurity, ciphers, and coding. In total this whole project has helped me further continue my learning and understanding about the ever evolving digital world.
Henry Dougherty | St Thomas The Apostle School - Elkhart, IndianaGrade-8 Project Number- 206Title: Laminar Flow: A Project in Fluid DynamicsView Project e-Portfolio--The objective of this science fair project was to investigate the relationship between water pressure and laminar flow. Laminar flow, also known as streamline flow, is the smooth and orderly movement of liquid particles in a straight line. It is an important concept in fluid dynamics and has many real-world applications, such as in the design of pipes, pumps, and turbines.The data collected from the experiment showed a small decrease in laminar flow as the water pressure increased. This is due to the increase in turbulence caused by the higher water pressure. Turbulence is the chaotic and irregular movement of liquid particles, which disrupts the smooth flow of the liquid. This can be seen in water where the edges of the column began to destabilize. The results of this study have important implications in various industries, such as plumbing, hydraulics, and aeronautics. Understanding the relationship between water pressure and laminar flow can help engineers design more efficient and effective systems, reducing energy consumption and costs. In addition, this knowledge is being applied in environmental conservation efforts, such as in the design of fish ladders to improve fish migration in rivers and streams. In conclusion, this study has demonstrated that changing water pressure can decrease laminar flow in water, leading to an increase in turbulence. The data collected supports this hypothesis and is further reinforced by the calculated Reynolds numbers. This research has real-world applications and can contribute to the advancement of fluid dynamics and its impact on various industries.
Olivia Snell | St Thomas The Apostle School - Elkhart, IndianaGrade-8 Project Number- 207Title: The Effect of Blade Number on Wind Turbine SpeedView Project e-Portfolio--I chose this experiment because wind turbines are a clean, renewable energy source as they provide electricity without burning fossil fuels or polluting the air. There is however a significant upfront cost in building and installing turbines. The cost of a utility scale wind turbine ranges from $1.3 million to $2.2 million per megawatt1 and one wind turbine blade alone can cost over $150,000. For this project, I wanted to know how differing numbers of blades, 2, 3, and 4, affected wind turbine speed. My hypothesis was that 4 blades would spin the fastest and have the most revolutions in 1 minute because 4 blades provide better torque.3 To test this, I constructed a model wind turbine with 3 different hubs each fitted with 2, 3 or 4 blades. Using a fan as my wind source, I then ran experiments for 2, 3, and 4 blades. My conclusion was that my results did not support my hypothesis that having 4 blades would be faster than 3 or 2 blades. I learned that blade angle, amount of blade curl, and consistency between turbine builds, all affected turbine speed. Once I realized the effect of these other variables, I made them more consistent and reran my experiments. Though my results showed that the fewer blades were faster, this is because of the blades' wind shadow. If you have more blades you have more wind shadow, this makes the blades go slower and you can see this in my data.
Jonathan Davis | Castle North Middle School - Newburgh, IndianaGrade-8 Project Number- 208Title: Comparison of Flexural Strength of Carbon-Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composites.View Project e-Portfolio--Carbon fiber reinforced epoxy materials have a wide range of applications in many industries because of their high strength to weight ratio. Flexural strength is the maximum stress that a material can withstand before it breaks in a bending test, an essential property to consider when choosing materials to use in structural applications. This project compared the flexural strength of three different types of carbon fiber reinforced epoxy composites. Based on my background research that the longer the carbon fiber reinforcing, the more strength added to the epoxy, my hypothesis was that the continuous fiber reinforced group would place first, the short fiber reinforced group would place second, the particle reinforced group would place third, and the control group would place last, as it has no reinforcement. I made epoxy composite samples using three different types of reinforcing, continuous fiber, short fiber (2.54cm), and particle fiber (0.3175cm), for three experimental groups, respectively, and non-reinforced epoxy samples for a control group. Each group had eight samples. I ran the three-point bending test, got the maximum bending force for each sample and the average maximum bending force for each group, and calculated the average flexural strength for each group. My data and results support my hypothesis. My research contributes to the development of material science and chemical engineering. The results of this project benefit product design when choosing materials in many fields, such as air force, navy, marine, civil aviation, aerospace, automobiles, wind energy, construction, medical technology, robotics, automation, and more.
Madison Triola | Castle North Middle School - Newburgh, IndianaGrade-8 Project Number- 209Title: Liquefaction in Action Digging DeeperView Project e-Portfolio--The purpose of this experiment was to determine if ratios of coarse to fine sand are more resistant to the effects of liquefaction than either sand alone. The data gathered in this experiment may be used to predict where liquefaction will occur and how it can be prevented. To simulate an earthquake a shaker table was built, a crucial piece in the overall function of the experiment. The shaker table provided a precise and constant intensity in which the emulsion was shaken. The results of the simulation partially support my hypothesis. Though all of the ratios of coarse to fine sand sank less than either sand type by itself, the 50/50 ratio did not sink the least like originally hypothesized. The 75/25 ratio of coarse to fine sand showed the most resistance to liquefaction. The 25/75 ratio of coarse to fine sand also sank less then the 50/50 ratio. The coarse sand sank an average distance of 2.7 cm. The fine sand sank an average distance of 2 cm. The 50/50 ratios of coarse to fine sand sank an average distance of 1.9 cm. The (75% coarse) / (25% fine) mixtures sank an average of 1.3 cm, while the (25% coarse) / (75% fine) mixture sank an average of 1.8 cm. The ratios were more effective at withstanding the simulation because the smaller particles fill in the gaps between the larger particles resulting in smaller pores and ultimately less space for the water to move through.
Alizay Bilal | West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School - West Lafayette, INGrade-8 Project Number- 210Title: Taking Short Cuts: Transforming One Type of Cell into Another Using Direct ReprogrammingView Project e-Portfolio--As early as the first decade of the 21st century, scientists discovered how to turn one adult cell type into another. In the medical field, this has enormous implications. This includes the possibility of using cells that are spared by a patient to turn into another type of cell that is much more vital for that patient. The scientific feat of reprogramming human cells' identities is amazing, but how does it work? Prior to the use of this technology regularly in hospitals, what potential problems must be resolved? The purpose of this project was to find out how direct reprogramming can transform one type of cell straight into another in an effective and accurate way. Engineering goals included researching, analyzing, and evaluating the best and worst transcription factors in direct reprogramming efforts for the target cell type. All engineering goals were satisfied with data from research and bioinformatics databases.
Chinmay Nambiar | Fishers Junior High School - Fishers, IndianaGrade-8 Project Number- 211Title: How do different gases affect an electric field?View Project e-Portfolio--The purpose of this experiment was to determine which gas proves most efficient when used on an electric field's voltage, frequency, decibels, temperature, and color of spark. The hypothesis was “If an electric field is put in an environment with either helium, argon, steam, or an absence of air, then there will be no change with helium, argon, and steam when compared to an electric field with air but change with an absence of air with a decrease in temperature, voltage, frequency, and decibels but also a brighter color because the gases intermolecular spacing is far apart unlike solids and liquids and the process of electron flow becomes more difficult and without air, there is no conductor meaning the electrons have nothing to grab onto.” The null hypothesis was “If an electric field is put in an environment with either helium, argon, steam, or an absence of air, then there will be no change with an absence of air when compared to an electric field with air but no change with helium, argon, and steam with a increase in temperature, voltage, frequency, and decibels but also a brighter color.” The materials used for this experiment were one vacuum chamber, argon gas, helium gas, steam, a multimeter, a decibel/frequency meter, and one Tesla coil. The data was collected by placing the jar that the Tesla coil was inside upside down because the gases are lighter than air meaning their force pushes the air down and pushes itself up and for argon, it’s heavier meaning it pushes itself down while pushing the air up. From the data, it was found that the highest voltage was helium, the highest frequency was Argon, the lowest decibels were air, the lowest temperature was no air, and the brightest color was helium while no air and air had the darkest colors. It’s best to have the lowest temperature and lowest decibels for a more controlled experiment and also have the highest voltage for greater power and I higher frequency to help the radius of the electric field expand. The point of measuring the color was purely for observation purposes and to incorporate a qualitative observation into the data. After analyzing the data, it was found that helium had proved the most efficient of the gases and this conclusion was made by assigning each ranking a point value. For example, the highest voltage would get 1 point, the second highest gets 0.8 points, and so on.
Luke Kocovski | Saint Pius X School - Granger, IndianaGrade-8 Project Number- 212Title: Improving Wind TurbinesView Project e-Portfolio--More and more people are turning to wind turbines as an energy source as fossil fuels are being replaced by clean and renewable energy sources. This project tests the different shapes of wind turbines that are common today and improves upon the most promising designs. These turbines were tested in front of a fan for one minute intervals. The number of full rotations was numbered and a light was connected to a spinning generator to see how much energy was generated. My hypothesis was that the triple bladed horizontal axis wind turbine would be the most effective and have the most rotations. The experiment supported my hypothesis and showed that horizontal axis windmills are also very effective. Using this data, I constructed a turbine that had three blades, but the blades were shaped differently so that the turbine could spin when the wind came from either direction. The new design of a turbine could improve the efficiency of wind farms by allowing the turbines to not have to rotate to face towards the wind, so less energy would be used.
Corban Arthur | Kankakee Valley Middle School - Demotte, IndianaGrade-8 Project Number- 213Title: Breaking BondsView Project e-Portfolio--I have always been interested in learning more about chemistry and how elements and atoms function together. On seeing that separating an oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms was possible I started studying to see how I could do this myself. There were countless designs out there that were too complicated or too simple for me to work with. So, I decided to design a model myself and build it up to a large enough scale that I could bring a sample of hydrogen to school. With lots of help, and more importantly, studying about something that I was not being taught in school, I never gave up even though I had numerous trials and people saying that this idea wouldn’t work. Furthermore, the whole purpose of this project is to create a design to make it easy for people to have fun with electrolysis and hydrolysis and to create an efficient design that will give results, without being dangerous to the experimenters.
Jayden Chase | Saint Anthony De Padua School - Osceola, INGrade-8 Project Number- 214Title: Hydroelectric GeneratorView Project e-Portfolio--I made a mobile hydroelectric generator with 3 prototype turbines that could make electricity from any moving water source. Hydroelectricity is an important form of energy to harness because it is a form of renewable energy. We need to lean more on renewable energy because the burning of fossil fuels is warming the world due to the Greenhouse effect. So, I made an affordable, cost effective, and low maintenance generator and prototype turbines to help produce clean energy. I made prototype A, which had thin, curved, and long rectangular fins, B, which had flat, square and thick fins, and C, which had short rectangular, bent, and thick fins. Prototype A made between 0.01-0.13 millivolts, B made between 0-0.008 millivolts, and C made between 0.145-0.52 millivolts. With my research, I discovered that the higher amount of bend in the fins caught more water which contributed to a higher amount of energy produced.
Kloe Castaneda | Frankfort Middle School - Frankfort, IndianaGrade-8 Project Number- 215Title: Hear Me Out!View Project e-Portfolio--The purpose of my project is to investigate if there’s a higher likelihood for inattentional listening among receptive bilinguals, compared to fluent bilinguals. I believe fluent bilinguals may exhibit lower levels of inattentional listening compared to receptive bilinguals. Receptive bilinguals primarily grew up in an environment where they focused on a specific language to comprehend it, which later shaped the functioning of their brain. In contrast, fluent bilinguals, having been exposed to and comprehending the Spanish language from an early age. Therefore, it’s suggested that the differences in the amount of exposure and language proficiency may contribute to levels of inattentional listening. Here is the procedure. Create a comprehensive three part bilingual test on Google Docs. First part is reading Spanish comprehension questions, second is listening to Spanish comprehension questions, and third listen to a series of words and tally how many start with ‘M’. Also ask if they heard the background noise(which was a bird.) Take the responses and score them. Group individuals into distinct categories: fluent bilinguals and receptive bilinguals. Calculate the average number of participants who heard the bird chirp for each group, as well as the average number of correctly counted words starting with 'M'. Finally, compare the averages of bird chirp perception and correctly count 'M' words between the two groups. In conclusion, my hypothesis is correct. This is supported by a significant difference in the number of fluent bilinguals who detected the bird chirp versus the number of receptive bilinguals who detected it.
Marlana Giesler | Frankfort Middle School - Frankfort, IndianaGrade-8 Project Number- 216Title: Heads or Tails?View Project e-Portfolio--My purpose is to see how the duration of ultraviolet light (UV-B) exposure without a break affects the body regeneration of planaria. I predict that the planaria which have a longer resting time to recover from the potential cancerous mutations in between periods of UV-B light exposure will show less negative effects during the regeneration. Here is my procedure. Get 8 containers and label them either T for tails or H for heads. Take 32 planaria and cut them each in half, putting 8 of the heads in each head container and 8 of the tails in each tail container. Next, leave these containers under 3 different UV-B lamps. One lamp will shine for 12 minutes all at once, one will shine for 6 minutes every 12 hours, and one will shine for 4 minutes every 8 hours. There is one set of heads and one set of tails under each light, as well as a fourth set that gets no UV-B exposure as the control group. Finally, leave the planaria undisturbed in a warm area and wait for the planaria to regenerate. In conclusion, my hypothesis was correct. The planaria under the UV-B lamp for all 12 minutes with no rest time had a few fatalities, multiple mutations, and took noticeably longer to regenerate. This is similar to the way that some humans lay out to sun tan for too long and can get major burns, or sometimes the damage from the UV rays even leads to skin cancer.
Jayden Sallee | Frankfort Middle School - frankfort, Indiana Grade-8 Project Number- 217Title: Will It Wind?View Project e-Portfolio--My purpose is to see how altering the blades shape affects a wind turbine’s energy production. I predicted that the number of sharp wind catching angles in a shape directly affects its ability to harness wind energy. When a shape has more of the angles, it creates more opportunities for wind to be caught. First I calculated and mapped the area of each shape. I traced and cut every shape so that there we four of each. I glued wooden sticks to each shape, leaving 2cm of stick out from behind the shape to mount the shape to the wooden hub attached to the motor. Then I prepped for my experiment, which included a wooden balsa wood tower on a platform that had a miniature motor attached to it. I then connected the leads of the motor to a voltmeter. When conducting my experiment, I set the fan on max level for approximately 10 seconds or until the meter readings leveled out. I then stopped the fan and recorded the voltage produced. I repeated this for every shape 5 times. In conclusion, my hypothesis was incorrect: the amount of energy produced by the shapes is not directly affected by the amount of sharp angles. Instead, it was affected by where most of the area is on the shape relative to the hub. From my data, the trapezoid shape performed the best. This is because shapes like the oval or rectangle are too dull or symmetrical to catch wind effectively.
Sadie Sheets | Frankfort Middle School - Frankfort, IndianaGrade-8 Project Number- 218Title: Brain GamesView Project e-Portfolio--Here is my purpose: if I use technology to give a subliminal flash of the correct color for a Stroop Effect color question just before the word is viewed, will that positively affect the students’ accuracy of their answers? I believe that this will be beneficial to the students because when the brain is under pressure it tends to forget the expectations for a project. I started my project by making my Stroop Effect slideshow. I made this on Google Slides. Within each slideshow, there are the same 20 slides of colored words where the word is a color but is written in a different color. For example, RED is a color word, but it is written in a color other than red. This is an example of the Stroop effect. For my testing slideshow, there is a 0.4 second flash of the correct color of the word students are expected to say. This is the subliminal flash. For the other control video, there is no such subliminal color flash. I tested 50 eighth graders individually over the course of about a week. At the end of my project, I can conclude that the subliminal flash did positively affect 8th grade students being tested for the Stroop Effect. The presence of the flash, even just briefly, is seen by the brain and processed without the interference of the Stroop Effect, which increases overall accuracy with this task. This proves my hypothesis was correct.
Ritika Dani | West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-8 Project Number- 219Title: Segregation of Micro and Macro Plastics From Water Using Electrolysis. View Project e-Portfolio--This research is to investigate the reduction of micro and macro plastics in waste water. This study was to explore a feasible method to reduce the amount of micro and macro plastics in water. A method that was used was to connect a DC power supply to 2 liters of water and 0.5 ounce of micro and macro plastics to replicate waste water. The DC power supply was at 5 volts at all times and was on for 5 days. I concluded that the micro and macro plastics were attracted to the negative charged side because of the positively charged plastics.
Divinety Goff , Gavin Lacefield | New Tech Institute - Evansville, INGrade-9 Project Number- 250Title: How Palm Trees Inspire, The Resistance DesiredView Project e-Portfolio--On average, about $685,000 of property damage was caused by tornadoes in 2022. Millions of people lose their homes in natural disasters, so the goal was to find a better alternative. The prototype consists of three layers: fiberwood composite, cement composite, and liquid rubber. Compared to what is currently used in construction today (vinyl, plywood, and concrete composite), it’s a stronger set-up and will save people money. The hypothesis investigated was: a wind and impact resistant prototype could be created to be more durable and cost-effective than what is used in construction today. The problem was approached by observing palm trees. Palm trees are local to states that commonly experience natural disasters, so observing their structure, a prototype could be created. The experiment was designed to reflect the type of materials used, the wind speeds possible, and the debris that could affect the sidings. It was found that the hypothesis was supported. The prototype withstood the tests better than the other materials. Example: the 3rd test for impact found that the prototype only had a dent of 0.762 cm. Compared to the cement composite, with a dent of 1.45 cm. To conclude, the prototype contributes to the construction industry and improves the durability of exterior sidings. The design met the criteria of being impact and wind resistant, as well as being designed around the structure of palm trees.
Glory Agunbiade | Indiana Math and Science Academy North - Indianapolis, IndianaGrade-9 Project Number- 251Title: Does the pH level of water affect how plants grow?View Project e-Portfolio--My question was whether plants will grow faster based on the pH levels they are watered with. The objective of my project is to determine whether plants would grow faster depending on the water they’re watered with. For this experiment, I planted cherry belle radishes and watered them with pH levels of 7, 7-8, and 9.5+ for 4 weeks, and added fertilizer weekly. As a result of this, the plants watered with a pH of 9.5+ grew faster than the other plants. This experiment helped me learn many things about plants and what to water them with. I learned that the best pH to water cherry belle radishes was 9.5+. As well as many things about their growth & germination process.
Kyle Yang | Carmel High School - Carmel, IndianaGrade-9 Project Number- 252Title: Identification of Lung Cancer Biomarkers Through Coding Sequences Targeted by miRNAsView Project e-Portfolio--Environmental and genetic factors can both contribute to lung cancer development. Lung cancer is frequently caused by altered gene expression. Identifying factors aiding researchers in developing treatments for Lung Cancer Patients is the purpose of my project. I selected 55 highly expressed lung cancer candidate genes by analyzing the TCGA lung cancer dataset. Three prime untranslated region sequences, or three prime UTR, coding sequences, miRNAs target regions, and superfamilies were all studied using a variety of bioinformatics tools and databases. Nine genes were highly conserved between Humans, Mice, and Groundhogs, according to the results of my sequence alignment results provided by MUSCLE V5. I then checked the Tarbase Database to see if any miRNAs target these nine genes. I found that only ITM2B, CD74, and SFTPB had miRNA target information available in the database. To check if the genes were targeted by miRNAs in their coding regions, I used Diana-MicroT to identify specific coding sequences (CDS) targeted by miRNAs. There were four CDS targeting miRNAs, hsa-miR-33a-3p, hsa-miR-409-3p, hsa-miR-545-5p, and hsa-miR-2110. Analyzing the data from the UCSC Genome Browser, I conclude that the targeting sites by hsa-miR-2110 for CD74 are not as specific as ITM2B targeting sites by other miRNAs. Furthermore, the two CDS targeting miRNA, hsa-miR-33a-3p, and hsa-miR-409-3p have similar amino acid binding patterns. Through Uniprot ID-Mapping and NCBI CD-Search, I was able to obtain many common superfamilies between these genes targeted by miRNAs. My research provides clues for identified candidate biomarkers through their CDS regions targeted by miRNAs.
Yash Tomar | West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-9 Project Number- 253Title: Unveiling Contextual Bias Mitigation: A Comparative Analysis of Data Mixing Across Machine Learning ClassifiersView Project e-Portfolio--Bias in machine learning models can lead to unfair outcomes, raising concerns about the increasingly pivotal role of AI. Current bias reduction methods often falter due to insufficient dataset diversity, exacerbating existing biases. This study delves into the potential of data mixing to alleviate such issues. Similar economic datasets from Mombasa, Kolkata, and Colombo since 1960, encompassing variables like tea prices, GDP per capita, and inflation rates, were constructed. The datasets were expanded for enhanced transparency and accuracy by employing data augmentation techniques such as extension and noise addition. Employing feature-wise mixing, the datasets were amalgamated into a mixed dataset. Five regression classifiers Support Vector Machines (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Decision Trees, Neural Networks, and Random Forests were employed on these datasets. Performance evaluation utilized mean squared error (MSE), with an incremental increase in training data and ten repetitions to mitigate variability. This process was repeated across all four datasets and five classifiers. Results revealed that models trained on mixed datasets exhibited statistically lower MSE, except in the case of Neural Networks, which remained resilient to data mixing. This study underscores the significance of data mixing as a bias mitigation strategy and advocates for further research into its impact on model performance and interpretability across diverse datasets and model types. Computer scientists may utilize this new method alongside other bias mitigation tactics to optimize bias mitigation efforts and make more informed decisions on classifier selection.
Attalia Wolf | Mount Vernon Jr High School - Mount Vernon, IndianaGrade-9 Project Number- 254Title: Mediums For Microgreens View Project e-Portfolio--The objective of the project was to determine the most effective medium for microgreen growth. Five different mediums and four seed types were researched, and a hypothesis was formulated: "If microgreens are tested in Coco Coir, Miracle-Gro soil, hemp mats, perlite, and coffee grounds, then Coco Coir will perform the best, followed by Miracle-Gro, perlite, hemp mats, and coffee grounds." To test the hypothesis, pea, beet, radish, and arugula seeds were planted in trays with each medium and were allowed to germinate in the absence of light before maturing under growing lights. Multiple factors, including yield and time-to-maturity, were evaluated. After analyzing the data, it was found that Miracle Gro was the most effective medium overall, producing the highest yield in the least amount of time. Coco Coir came in a close second, with all seed trays growing, but taking more time and producing less yield. Perlite was ranked third, with only three trays able to be harvested, and taking more time but producing less yield. Hemp mat ranked fourth, with only one tray able to be harvested. Finally, coffee grounds came in last, as none of the trays sprouted. Despite challenges, such as mold problems, all seed trays were kept in the same environment and given the same treatment, providing ample data to support the conclusions. In conclusion, this study provides valuable insights into the most effective medium for microgreen growth, with Miracle Gro exhibiting the best performance overall. These findings can be useful to growers and researchers in selecting the optimal medium for microgreen cultivation.
Nadia Brown | Lafayette Jefferson High School - Lafayette, IndianaGrade-9 Project Number- 255Title: The Effect of Personality on Focusing with NoiseView Project e-Portfolio--In this experiment, I tested if personality affects how a person focuses with noise. I hypothesized that introverts would have a harder time focusing compared to extroverts To test this experiment, I gathered 5 participants and had them do reading assignments while playing. different noises in the background. From the data collected, my hypothesis was proven to be not only incorrect but inconclusive. If I were to further my research, I would incorporate more people in my experiment, test them on other skills, and consider more factors when collecting data.
Makell Hall | Lafayette Jefferson High School - Lafayette , IndianaGrade-9 Project Number- 256Title: How Our Brain Perceive Taste Based on the Color of Foods View Project e-Portfolio--Is synesthesia (the cross of two out of your 5 senses) found in a certain gender or age? This is the reason for the experiment, to see if those two things can determine if your body can cross two of your senses and make your brain perceive something else. If we can pinpoint the gender and age synesthesia is most common, we would be able to have a better understanding of it. Not only get a better understanding but we would be able to conduct more experiments and give more information about it out to the public. All of the things you need for this experiment can be bought at a store for pretty cheap depending on how much data you want to collect and where you get them from. For this experiment, there were only three participants, one male, and two females. There were some errors in the experiment such as not enough participants, no age gap, uneven number of males and females, and the experiment was slightly rushed. Even though there weren’t many people to be a part of the experiment, the pie chart to the right proved that part of my hypothesis was correct. The pie chart shows a huge gap of time on how long my participants hesitated for. If this experiment were to be conducted again, definitely get around maybe 10-20 people, and have an even split between female and male. Not only fixing the ratio between female and males but it's also age range. Age range can play an important role in synesthesia because your taste buds change all the time. So, with this experiment the hypothesis was semi-correct, this can be said because there wasn’t an age range due to me conducting my experiment pretty last minute.
Ali Kennedy | Lafayette Jefferson High School - Lafayette, IndianaGrade-9 Project Number- 257Title: Do Honor High School Students have Relative Personalities?View Project e-Portfolio--This experiment is about how the IQ of a person connects with their personality. In class, many people talk about their favorite shows, other friends, just many types of topics. Depending on what they talk about their personality is shown through that verbal form. There is also the intelligence that comes into play, do they enjoy similar things? Hence the thought that if someone take a group of people with relative IQ, their personalities will align or be relative to another. The website that was used for the personality test was called 16personalities.com. It is a website that uses the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). To summarize it up, the MBTI gives provides 16 personalities, which is why the website is named that. Now, creating this test was very stressful. First, while thinking about how to conduct the test a resource called surveymonkey.com would be very helpful. It was a website all about making surveys. Working on the survey, an embedded hyperlink to 16personalities.com was created in the description of the survey. This way, they can enter the survey, take the personality test, and then put their results of the personality test into the survey. Secondly, there was no previous way to communicate to other students besides texting. There is one other way, and that is the teacher can be a liaison between the researchers and the participants. For context, in the school’s technology, students aren’t allowed to email each other. However, teachers can email all students and all staff that has an email. This means using a teacher the survey can be spread to other students. These students are specifically honor students of different ages from 14-18. Using seniors and juniors, the test would become more precise. But things didn’t go to plan, no sophomores took the test. The survey only allowed 25 students to take the test. In the end, the hypothesis was accepted because out of the 25 students, 92% of them had the N and/or P trait within their personality.
Sophie Golday | New Tech Institute - Evansville, INGrade-9 Project Number- 258Title: Which Straws StayView Project e-Portfolio--Biodegradable product manufacturers claim that their products break down within two weeks of use. However, with landfills reaching capacity, it's important to determine which brands of biodegradable straws break down more effectively and quickly in various solutions. To test this, straws from different brands were placed in three different solutions and stored in Mason Jars. The straws were left in the solutions for three weeks, and it was determined that the straws do not break down as quickly as advertised by the companies. One of the straws broke down significantly faster than the others in all three solutions, indicating that certain brands use superior materials for their products compared to their competitors brands.
Brian Chrobot | Marian High School - South Bend, IndianaGrade-9 Project Number- 259Title: How do different materials affect the blast of a Plasma PopperView Project e-Portfolio--The focus of this project is investigating the influence of different sizes of materials on the blast strength of the Plasma Popper. The experiment aims to discern the impact of varying material sizes on both the strength and length of the Plasma Popper's blast. Notably, the scarcity of articles on this subject suggests an unfamiliar exploration, as the Plasma Popper remains relatively unexplored beyond instructional articles detailing its construction. Despite its seemingly mundane idea with no real world benefits,except to display the importance of testing in any project to try and improve upon it to try and improve on an existing project. The research question was approached by employing two distinct testing methods. The first method involved video observation to capture the peak point of the blast before its dissipation, while the second method utilized a sliding cup system on a pole to measure the distance the cups moved by the blast. Detailed notes were taken during the experiment, and the outcomes were methodically recorded. After recording information data analysis occurred, including the construction of graphs and charts, allowing for a good understanding of the impact of different material sizes on the Plasma Popper's blast characteristics. The main findings of the experiment emphasized the heightened strength of the Plasma Popper when the largest tubing was paired with smaller chamber sizes. Furthermore, the combination of the largest tubing with the largest chamber resulted in the most substantial blast size. These results contribute valuable insights into optimizing the performance of the Plasma Popper, providing information between the material dimensions and blast outcomes.
Reagan Schacht | Marian High School - Granger, IndianaGrade-9 Project Number- 260Title: A Case Study in Arrow Fletching PerformanceView Project e-Portfolio--In this project I tested 6 different fletchings to see which one of them was the most accurate in an indoor range. I shot each arrow 5 times and looked at the velocity, drop, penetration, and the side to side movement. I used a chronograph to test the velocity which measured in feet per second. That showed that both of the feathers had the better velocity. I then realized that the feather did not maintain that speed as it went down range. This led me to see that the smallest vane had the better velocity. Measuring the drop, I measured from the middle of the target down to where the arrow was. The 1.5 inch vane had the least amount of drop. I did the same when measuring the left and right. I measured from the middle of the target to the arrow. The same results occurred. The smaller fletching had the best results. Then I measured the penetration. This I measured by putting my finger where the arrow met the target. I gently pulled it out and measured from my thumb to the point of the arrow. This ended up showing that the 3 inch vane had the most amount of penetration. In the end, everything but the penetration supported my hypothesis which was that the 1.5 inch vane would be the best fletching because there were less things that it could affect as it flew down the range.
Ty Kidwell | Northwestern Sr High School - Kokomo, IndianaGrade-9 Project Number- 261Title: Sequestering of CO2 Through Algal GrowthView Project e-Portfolio--This study partakes in identifying if algae can sequester carbon dioxide. The algae’s Spirulina and Oedogonium were utilized in this study. Oedogonium is found in freshwater ecosystems in both hemispheres. Spirulina is also found in various freshwater ecosystems. In this study there were only two groups, a control and a carbon dioxide affected group. In photosynthesis plants intake carbon dioxide and release oxygen, while during cellular respiration these plants intake oxygen and release carbon dioxide. In this study, mass, pH, and ppm of carbon dioxide was measured. The methods used to measure such elements were a scale, liquid pH tester, and carbon dioxide kit. In the control group the weights stayed similar around 28-35g throughout the whole experiment. The pH varied but not significantly. The carbon dioxide affected group weights continuously increased and the pH’s became acidic. A T-test was introduced to figure out if the pH and ppm of carbon dioxide matched was significant. In conclusion, the algae sequestered carbon dioxide to an extent, and could slightly be an influence to slow world problems within global warming.
Adam Lesko | Northwestern Sr High School - Kokomo , IndianaGrade-9 Project Number- 262Title: pH Affect on Zea Mays L. and it’s Ability to House NematodesView Project e-Portfolio--Pesticide destruction is a familiar term in the Midwest. Farmers and corn producers struggle to fight these root killers. The goal is to approach the problem from a different angle and find a solution that allows for healthier crops in the easiest way possible. This project involved 3 different soil solutions, one with a pH of 6, another with 8, and finally a neutral 7. Over a month span I irrigated sweet corn seedlings with their desired pH’s. The soil with a pH of 6 was irrigated with a mixture of vinegar, and the soil with a pH of 8 called for a mixture including agricultural lime. I then added the pesticides and the experiment began. After 30 days, I dug up the soil of the three samples and scavenged for root production. After documenting the amount of seedlings we found and the root lengths, I then looked for nematode life in my soil. This project provided significant information. I found that the soil with a pH of 8 was closer to accomplishing the ultimate goal and was deemed more suitable for sweet corn production. Although, no nematode life was examined and the cause is uncertain.
Conall Miller | Northwestern Sr High School - Kokomo, IndianaGrade-9 Project Number- 263Title: The Effects of Cupric Nitrate on E. ColiView Project e-Portfolio--Rings of inhibition are circles of no to little growth, or an increased amount of growth surrounding a variable such as, a paper disk soaked in a solution. The variable either inhibits growth or increases the growth. I used this technique to discover if cupric nitrate inhibits bacterial growth. I hypothesized that the cupric nitrate would inhibit growth. I thought this because copper exhibits antibacterial properties. Copper's atoms have a special property in which the ions released cause RNA degradation. I performed the experiment and the data showed that cupric nitrate does inhibit bacterial growth for E. coli. The control tests showed no inhibition and even growth throughout the petri dish, while the 10% showed an average of 3.33 cm diameter after 24 hours, and the other concentrations showed similar inhibition but not at the same width. In conclusion my hypothesis was correct. The data proves that cupric nitrate does inhibit E. coli growth.
Moszianne Pontius | Northwestern Sr High School - Kokomo, INGrade-9 Project Number- 264Title: Mushrooms, Metals, and MoldsView Project e-Portfolio--Hardmetal pollution is an issue in many parts of the world. Toxic chemicals from industries get into the ground and are absorbed by plants, making those plants inedible. Lead, zinc, and copper ions can cause many illnesses that are potentially fatal. This experiment tested to see if fungus absorbed the metal ions out of the toilet paper, as well as seeing if the metals would prohibit the growth of the mushrooms. Using a .01g, 1g, and a 10g to 100ml, nitrate to water solution, this experiment grew mushrooms out of a toilet paper roll. Throughout the experiment the rolls grew other fungus of varying styles. There was pink mold, black, brown, and green, even a mold that made it look like the paper was burned. Core samples were dissolved in water and centrifuged, to collect the liquid. Testing the lead with potassium chromate, the zinc with potassium ferrocyanide, and the copper with sodium hydroxide, show results with a lack of absorption. The growth of fungus was not prohibited in all samples, except the copper 10g solution group
Gabriel Smalley | Northwestern Sr High School - Kokomo, IndianaGrade-9 Project Number- 265Title: Real vs. Artificial Pheromones Using Drosophila melanogasterView Project e-Portfolio--Drosophila melanogaster produces a problem around the world. They love to feast on fruits and vegetables, especially if they are rotting fruits and vegetables. This is a big problem in Spain for the red bell pepper plant. The purpose of this project is to determine if Drosophila melanogaster has a preference for artificial smells vs natural smells. The hypothesis is that if Drosophila melanogaster are isolated from a food source for a short amount of time, then given a choice between natural and an artificial grape smell, they will choose the artificial smell. In this experiment, the Drosophila are taken away from a food source for about 6 hours. Then they are transferred to an empty vial that is connected by a Y shaped tube. A half cut grape is placed in the top left tube and either grape juice, Gatorade, and Grape Kool-Aid. Then the trial is run for 30 minutes and it is checked every 5 minutes. That is repeated 5 times by each liquid variable. Then graph the averages of each section of 5 trials. Control graph is the same as all the others, just the top two vials are both empty. Then record data into graphs.
Elyse Collins | Northwestern Sr High School - Kokomo, Indiana Grade-9 Project Number- 266Title: The Effects of Herbal Remedies on E. coli and Bacillus subtilis View Project e-Portfolio--In order to prevent infections, herbal remedies can be used to inhibit bacterial growth. The purpose of this experiment is to inhibit bacterial growth with natural herbal remedies. In this experiment Holy basil, Calendula, Bloodroot, and Thyme were tested against the bacterias E. coli and Bacillus subtilis. 100% solutions and 50% solutions were made by diluting the herbal tinctures with distilled water. Using the Kirby Bauer method the petri dishes were made. They were put in an incubator and measured every 24, 48, and 72 hours. Holy basil and Calendula showed no growth of rings of inhibition for the 100% solution or the 50% solution for either bacteria. Bloodroot showed a good percent of growth in both the 100% solution and the 50% solution on E. coli and Bacillus subtilis. The roots of plants are filled with microorganisms that can help inhibit bacterial growth. That is why the Bloodroot may work better than the rest of the herbs. Bloodroot also contains alkaloids. Alkaloids are compounds that contain a nitrogen atom. Alkaloids can also kill and inhibit the growth of different bacteria because they are toxic. Thyme showed little growth in the 100% solution and the 50% solution for Bacillus subtilis however it had no growth in E. coli. In conclusion the hypothesis was half supported. Bloodroot was able to greatly inhibit the bacterial growth. Thyme did some but not as well as Bloodroot. Lastly Holy basil and Calendula did not inhibit bacterial growth at all.
David Bowen | Lafayette Jefferson High School - Lafayette, IndianaGrade-9 Project Number- 267Title: Dirty Endeavors "Lead" People HereView Project e-Portfolio--Twenty soil samples were gathered from around Tippecanoe County in order to test for lead content using lead testing kits purchased from Carolina Biological Supply (Part Number: 480311). The kits detect lead at 400 ppm, the EPA Hazard level for humans. Testing was completed in a laboratory at Purdue Research Foundation, Kurz Technology Center. None of the special machinery in the laboratory was needed to conduct the experiment. Each sample was sieved to remove roots and small rocks and was tested for lead content using the kits. Results were calculated for each sample based on the sample weight as measured on a balance. Out of twenty samples, four tested positive for lead content above 400 ppm. One sample reacted with the reagents, indicating that the sample contained caustic material.
Chase Marin , Noah Montgomery | New Tech Institute - Evansville , IndianaGrade-10 Project Number- 300Title: Memory MuscleView Project e-Portfolio--
Mira Nuthakki | Carmel High School - Carmel, IndianaGrade-10 Project Number- 301Title: Safety-Prioritized Robust Macroscopic 3D Traffic Flow Optimization ModelView Project e-Portfolio-- Traffic congestion is increasing every year and causes nearly 100 billion in annual economic costs in the US and Europe each. It contributes to greenhouse emissions. It causes over 5 million crashes every year in the US with a fatal car accident occurring every 15 minutes and 19,000 crashes per day. Lancet estimates a global loss of 1.8 trillion to road traffic accidents between 2015 and 2030. 4 to 8PM is the peak time for crashes, and over 50% of car accidents happen within 5 miles of their home. Solutions to traffic congestion can include expensive infrastructure changes such as public or shared transportation, or adaptive traffic control systems that are less expensive but are applicable only to local intersections and are unable to handle dynamic, complex, city-wide traffic interactions. Deep learning methods such as CNN and LSTM (Convolutional Neural Network, Long Short-Term Memory Network) have just begun to be used in some smart cities in Asia with marked improvement in congestion. However, they involve significant online computation through their predictions and optimizations, which other deep learning architectures such as reinforcement learning do not. Currently, there is no city-wide 3D simulation environment studied by reinforcement learning that is physics informed that would allow a wide scope of random exploration of complexity of much higher magnitude. To address this, an Unity 3D city environment was used as a training environment for 3 models, CL-PPO (Curriculum Learning Proximal Policy Optimization); SAC (Soft Actor-Critic), and MA POCA (Multi Agent Posthumous Credit Assignment). Traffic flow was optimized by dynamically changing speed limits and times of traffic lights with goals to determine decrease in travel time and number of crashes. Robust Control theory was applied to ensure safety-first stability and less aggressive behavior. Curriculum learning was employed to gradually increase complexity of simulation. Value loss, policy loss, rewards and value estimate were calculated and analyzed. CL-PPO achieved the best performance and can be used via behavior cloning to train on real-life data to optimize traffic flow, decrease congestion and crashes, all using safety-first principles.
Yunwei Xia | Carmel High School - Carmel, INGrade-10 Project Number- 302Title: Diabetes Prediction Using Ensemble of Different Machine Learning ClassifiersView Project e-Portfolio--Diabetes is a chronic condition characterized by elevated blood sugar levels over an extended period. The risk and severity of diabetes can be significantly reduced through precise early prediction. However, predicting diabetes accurately poses challenges due to limited labeled data and the presence of outliers or missing values in diabetes datasets. In this project, we propose a robust framework for diabetes prediction that addresses these challenges by incorporating outlier rejection, missing value imputation, data standardization, feature selection, K-fold cross-validation, and various machine learning classifiers, including k-nearest neighbors, decision trees, random forest, AdaBoost, naive Bayes, XGBoost, and multilayer perceptron (MLP). Additionally, we develop weighted ensembling techniques to enhance diabetes prediction. Our experiments utilize a publicly available Diabetes Dataset, and our proposed framework consistently outperforms other methods in terms of sensitivity, specificity, and prediction accuracy, as demonstrated through extensive experimentation.
Stephen Petry | NE Region Home Schools - Huntington, INGrade-10 Project Number- 303Title: High Five: The process of engineering a prosthetic handView Project e-Portfolio--In this project, I undertook the challenge of creating a functional prosthetic hand for under $50. Using my knowledge of engineering and various 3D printing machines, along with some research on anatomy, I made a quantity of prototypes until I had met my parameters; all without spending $50. The hand will allow an amputee, who lost most of their hand, to regain what was lost. The next step from here is to make prosthetics for people missing more than just a hand.
Albert Lu | Culver Academies - Granger, IndianaGrade-10 Project Number- 304Title: Keyword Recommendations: Utilizing ChatGPT-Generated User Profiles to Enhance Compressed-Sparse-Row-Based Collaborative Filtering Recommender SystemsView Project e-Portfolio--Recommender systems are a crucial part of the modern, digital world, suggesting the most pertinent items for each user in a wide array of applications. However, recommender systems often face the cold start problem, in which a lack of sufficient data about individual users leads to inaccurate recommendations. Content-based recommendation is often used to address the cold start problem; however, information about users (e.g. profiles) is often either inaccurate or nonexistent. We propose a novel approach to addressing the cold start problem utilizing collaborative filtering recommender systems that factor in keywords extracted from ChatGPT-generated profiles for each user. We trained and compared standard cosine-similarity-based sparse matrix recommender systems, pure keyword-based recommender systems, and various combinations of the two approaches. We found that, though pure keyword-based recommendation was outperformed by standard collaborative filtering recommender systems, a combination approach led to increased prediction accuracy. Though resource-intensive, this new approach to a real-world application of collaborative filtering recommender systems can lead to better recommendations and address the cold start problem.
Zhenhe Shi | Culver Academies - Culver, IndianaGrade-10 Project Number- 305Title: A Multi-usage Underwater Robot Arm Based on Hydraulic Power and Compressible Bellow Pipe Structure Equipped With Grabbing and Transporting FeaturesView Project e-Portfolio--Current robot arm designs, mainly traditional (hard), are either limited in their ability to adapt, or in their ability to be exposed to different environments. This hinders their potential for multi-usage. Regarding this drawback, I envisioned creating a robot arm capable of underwater rescue and aid, deep sea exploration, preserving underwater habitat and ecosystem, and helping with the fishing industry, while embodying characteristics of affordability, cost-effectiveness, and deformability. Elaborately, this robot arm is manipulated with the withdrawal of water from any of its four bellow pipes, which put together makes up the torso of the device. When in action, the robot arm bends with two 90 degrees, forming a Z shape. Apart from the robot arm, the robot hand has three silicone coated rubber fingers, which guarantees a stable, non-slippery, and gentle grasp onto most irrationally shaped or fragile objects. General testing concludes that the robot arm has an omnidirectional workspace of 60cm, with its bending taking 9 seconds on average. To simulate different oceanic conditions, the robot arm was also tested in different concentrations of salt water. Results show negligible impact. Overall, this robot arm prototype only represents the fundamentals of its operations, while its effectiveness enhances with size. Moreover, when the robot is exposed to increased depth, thus pressure, underwater, there are other materials to choose from for the pipes. Looking forward, there are multiple improvements with this robot, such as an active underwater rescuer, a soft human replica, a medical detection instrument, or much more.
Norah Ahmed | Evansville Day School - Newburgh, IndianaGrade-10 Project Number- 306Title: The Effect of Hearing Loss on Anxiety and InsomniaView Project e-Portfolio--This research investigated the relationship between insomnia, anxiety, and hearing loss, with a focus on determining whether hearing loss exacerbates anxiety and insomnia in individuals. Motivated by the pressing issue of chronic insomnia in adults, especially those with disabilities, the study sought to unravel the psychological dimensions of sleep disturbances in the context of hearing loss. Employing the Insomnia Severity Index and Hamilton Anxiety Scale, data was collected from 100 participants with hearing loss through online support groups. Results indicated a substantial association between hearing loss and an elevated likelihood of insomnia (53%) and anxiety (61%). Notably, a moderate correlation (r=0.4223) was observed between anxiety and sleep patterns. These findings emphasize the imperative need to address mental health concerns in the hard-of-hearing community, highlighting the impact of chronic stress on sleep. The study underscores the necessity for tailored interventions and support systems for individuals with hearing loss. The research contributes valuable statistics to existing literature and prompts further exploration into the intricate connections among insomnia, anxiety, and hearing loss.
Vidhatri Iyer | University High School of Indiana - Zionsville, INGrade-10 Project Number- 307Title: Forecasting Urban Water Contamination of Escherichia coli Using Machine Learning ModelsView Project e-Portfolio--The state of Indiana ranks first in the nation for water recreation impairments due to contaminated waterways. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 73% of rivers and streams and 23% of lakes and reservoirs have recreational use impairments like swimming, fishing, and boating. Increased density of urban population and agricultural activities are some of the key contributors to run-off into our urban watersheds. The fecal coliform bacteria Escherichia coli (E. coli) has been used as an indicator of bacterial pollution in the water streams. Local governmental water authorities and non-profit organizations routinely collect samples of urban waters weekly (or biweekly) to measure water quality parameters including E. coli counts. These analytical methods are time-consuming and only provide a retrospective analysis of E. coli loads. Thus, forecasting of E. coli contamination in urban waters is necessary to provide real-time information to the public about their suitability for bodily contact, recreation, fishing, boating, and domestic utilization. Another caveat of the current methods is the lack of integration of the local climatic conditions such as changes in temperature and precipitation. This research aims to accurately predict E. coli levels in urban water streams utilizing the last 20 years of climatic factors (temperature, precipitation) and water sample analysis data. E. coli contamination data was collected for three water streams from the Marion County (Indiana) watershed project from 2003 to 2022. Daily temperature and precipitation data for Marion County were obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration site. These 2 sources of data were combined using the date field as a common parameter. The data set was further cleaned to remove nulls, non-numerical, duplicate, and erroneous values above 3 standard deviations. An initial exploratory data analysis was performed to understand the correlation of parameters to E. coli levels. Next, additional calculated values such as cumulative degree days, and max precipitation in 10 days or 15 days were included as input for 6 machine learning models (Logistic Regression, Random Forest Classifier, Extra Trees Classifier, Decision Tree Classifier, Gradient boosting Classifier and XGB Classifier). Feature importance analysis and overall accuracy scores across these 6 machine learning models were compared to identify the best model. XGB classifier consistently had an ROC value of above 85% for 3 individual water streams.
Bharath Anand | West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-10 Project Number- 308Title: Placing Electric Vehicle Charging Stations: An Optimization Problem and Unsupervised Machine Learning SolutionView Project e-Portfolio--Electric Vehicles (EVs) offer a pathway to lower transportation costs and emissions. However, lack of adequate charging infrastructure is a top concern among prospective buyers, threatening to derail EV adoption. Realizing the US target of 48 million EVs on the road by 2030 will require 1.2 million new public charging stations – over 20x the current number. Where should these stations be placed? To answer this question, my project makes three contributions: (i) a multi-objective optimization problem formulation, (ii) a novel unsupervised machine learning solution, and (iii) an open-source software tool called EV-Planner. Previous efforts on charging station placement only optimize for a single criterion such as user-to-station distance, limiting their applicability. In contrast, my formulation incorporates multiple criteria including minimizing average user-to-station distance, maximizing fairness in coverage, and balancing load across stations. My project also proposes computationally efficient solutions based on clustering, a class of unsupervised machine learning. To overcome the limitations of state-of-the-art clustering algorithms, I propose a new algorithm called Suggest-Accept Clustering, which iterates between two steps: (i) generation of clusters and (ii) acceptance of clusters based on any specified cost function. I used public Geospatial datasets to evaluate EV-Planner across 10 US states. On average, EV-Planner cuts down distances to charging stations by 52.3%, reduces the number of users who are farther than 3 miles from a charging station by up to 10.7 times and reduces overloaded EV stations by 71.7%, offering a promising solution to government agencies and the industry in planning future EV infrastructure.
Ethan Zhang | West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-10 Project Number- 309Title: Design and Development of a Soft Variable Stiffness Robotic FingerView Project e-Portfolio--Hand and finger rehabilitation is a lengthy and costly process, often taking months to yield significant results. This presents a major challenge for individuals who do not have the financial capability to continue with expensive therapies. Pneumatic network actuators offer a potential solution. Pneumatic networks (pneu-nets) are a type of soft actuator that consist of hollow channels embedded in elastomeric materials which inflate when filled with pressurized gas. This inflation results in a bending motion. However, conventional pneu-nets offer limited control, resulting in a binary bent or straight shape. In our study, we introduce a novel design for pneu-net fingers that enables controlled actuation. This design incorporates multiple pneumatic pistons to manipulate the bending motion of the actuator. We evaluate our pneu-nets based on actuation time, gas consumption, and fatigue resistance. We explore potential applications of our pneu-nets in soft robotics, including their use in grippers, rehabilitation devices, and manipulators. Our research contributes to the advancement of soft robotics by enhancing the controllability and versatility of pneu-net actuators.
Kaydence Peterson , Kaelin League | New Tech Institute - Evansville, IndianaGrade-10 Project Number- 310Title: CustosView Project e-Portfolio--This engineering project focuses on enhancing the functionality of service dogs to improve the accessibility and efficiency of their assistance. The primary objective is to develop a cutting-edge tracking system that enables individuals to follow service dogs and locate their handlers more easily. This system integrates advanced GPS technology and sensor networks, allowing real-time monitoring of the service dog's movements. The innovation lies in the design of a lightweight, unobtrusive device attached to the service dog's harness. This device not only tracks the dog's position but also incorporates features such as proximity alerts and directional indicators. These elements aid individuals with visual impairments in navigating crowded or unfamiliar environments, fostering greater independence and confidence. The project places a strong emphasis on user-friendly interfaces, ensuring that both handlers and those assisted by the service dogs can effortlessly interact with the tracking system. Additionally, the technology considers the well-being of the service dogs, incorporating elements to monitor their health and comfort during tasks. Through this initiative, the engineering team aims to bridge accessibility gaps, empower individuals with disabilities, and promote the seamless integration of service dogs into diverse environments. The project aligns with a commitment to leveraging technology for social impact, fostering inclusivity, and enhancing the overall quality of life for those relying on service dogs for support.
Connor Soon | Central Catholic Jr-Sr High School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-10 Project Number- 311Title: Object Detection and Tracking using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a DroneView Project e-Portfolio-- Title: Object Detection and Tracking using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a Drone Goal: To detect and track an object using Artificial Intelligence and a drone. The user can specify the object to detect, and the drone will track the object and search for the object if it is lost from view of the camera. Procedure: A drone, a remote PC, and an AI are needed. The drone must be controllable by radio and a PC is needed to run the AI and control tracking control. The drone is a DJI Ryze Tello drone which is affordable, small, light, and has a Python library which can control and receive images from its camera. The AI object detection is the YOLO version 8, an object detection model available for open-source use. It acquires the input image and the results include the type of objects detected, their box coordinates, and an annotated image. Feedback control keeps the object in the center of the field of view. Data/Results Data is collected for horizontal, vertical, distance, and yaw error correction. Only one type of error is corrected at one time. From testing, it can be seen that the closed loop tracking algorithm can move the drone to center the object in the camera image Conclusions: The tracking method works well for a slow moving person in horizontal, vertical, distance correction with proportional gain KP100. The yaw correction works better with proportional gain KP1 than the KP5 case,which appears unstable.
Ava Prather | Northwestern Sr High School - Galveston , IndianaGrade-10 Project Number- 312Title: Effects of Saltwater Intrusion on Daphnia in Aquifers View Project e-Portfolio--The purpose of this project is to determine the effects of saltwater intrusion on daphnia in an environment that simulates an aquifer. The experiment conducted consisted of daphnia being placed in jars with 0.01% salinity of NaCl, MgCl2, and NaHCO3. Survivorship of the daphnia was collected every 48 hours and the salinity was raised by another 0.01%. A stress test was also conducted with daphnia that were not introduced to any type of salinization. The Daphnia were placed in jars of salinity ranging from 0.01%, 0.1%, 1%, 5%, and 10% for eight hours and survivorship was taken every hour. The daphnia that were placed in the 10% and 5% jars died within the first hour. Daphnia in the 1% jars died within four hours and daphnia in the 0.1% jars died within six to seven hours. The daphnia that were placed in the long term experiment were able to survive and reproduce in 0.1% salinity. The deceased daphnia in the jars with higher salinization (i.e. 10% and 5%) had salt residue covering their bodies. When high amounts of salt are dumped into the water the daphnia that have not had a chance to adapt are susceptible to death. This shows a need to find alternatives to road salts and limit the overuse of them.
Titus Refner | DeKalb High School - Auburn, INGrade-10 Project Number- 313Title: Organic Vs. Chemical FertilizersView Project e-Portfolio--“How does organic fertilizer compare with inorganic fertilizer in fruit production?” Titus Refner Introduction- Most of my family and I love eating fresh, homegrown produce. In multiple previous experiments, I have learned that inorganic fertilizers and organic fertilizers are productive in fruit production. This time I wanted to know if inorganic fertilizers are better than organic fertilizers in the long term. For 3 years I will grow my garden with organic and inorganic fertilizers. Problem Statement- What will have a higher fruit production, organic fertilizer or inorganic fertilizer? Procedures- I began by researching inorganic fertilizers, organic fertilizers, and worms. Then, I conducted a soil test on each side of the garden. I added worms to the organic side and planted all plants (even for each side). When it was ripe, I harvested the produce, weighed and recorded them. At the end of the growing season, I calculated totals and took averages. I started my experiment on July 12, 2023, and finished picking on Oct 9, 2023. Results- At the end of the growing season, Organic (O) Zucchini had 28.416 kg, Inorganic (I) Zucchini had 24.886 kg, O Beans had 9.297 kg, I Beans had 7.916 kg, O Jalapeno had 10.091 kg, I Jalapeno had 10.301 kg, O Peas had 4.559 kg, I Peas had 4.418 kg, O Cherry Tomato had 18.31 kg, I Cherry Tomato had 22.13 kg, O Tomato had 52.076 kg, I Tomato had 41.102 kg. Conclusion- My hypothesis was incorrect! Based on the plants I grew, the Organic fertilizer (the North side) had the most amount of produce at 122.749 kg with the most amount of Zucchini, Beans, Peas, and Tomatoes. Inorganic (the South side) had the most Jalapenos and Cherry Tomatoes.
Logan Golden | East Noble High School - Kendallville , indianaGrade-10 Project Number- 314Title: MBTI and StereotypingView Project e-Portfolio--People stereotype other people differently and I wonder if people with the same MBTI test result stereotype the same. The MBTI test categorizes people into 16 unique personalities. The goal of the project is to determine whether the 16 personalities will stereotype people’s facial images differently. It was hypothesized that there would be some differences in response from the various personality types. The experiment was conducted by determining the personality type of each participant using the Myers Briggs personality test. Participants were obtained from various public locations including school and public meeting places. Upon completion of the personality test, each person would record their answers after viewing a variety of facial images. The Face Test has a series of face from AI generated faces with questions that are stereotypical. Participants are of various ages and genders. The test is anonymous, and each question’s answers were recorded. Faces and questions which were similar were included in the same data set. The data showed that in some situations, there is a statistical difference in the responses of some personality types when compared to other personality types. Most of the images had no significant differences between personality types and their responses.
Samuel Martin | Northwestern Sr High School - Walton, IndianaGrade-10 Project Number- 315Title: The use of lichen-derived secondary metabolites as pesticides.View Project e-Portfolio--Bean beetles are an agricultural pest, destroying crops of legumes like mung beans and cowpeas. They decrease the yields of infested crops by up to 90% and reproduce quickly in warmer temperatures. The goal of the project was to see if the secondary metabolites of lichens could be used to eliminate bean beetles and prevent their larvae from hatching. Usnic acid, Vulpinic acid, and Fumarprotocetraric acid were isolated from Usnea barbata, Letharia vulpina, and Cladonia rangiferina respectively. All of the chosen metabolites have been observed to have antifeedant properties, however, the current lichen-related research has focused almost entirely on their medicinal uses, with many lichens going almost completely unresearched. Proving the efficacy of secondary metabolites could allow for new organic pesticides to come to the market. The lichens chosen for the experiment could easily be grown in the same climates that the mung beans, as well as bean beetles, thrive in. Vulpinic acid displayed the most promise as a pesticide, however, Usnic acid also showed a strong capacity to exterminate bugs in higher concentrations. The results mostly supported my hypothesis as the Vulpinic acid was most effective, followed by Usnic acid. The Fumarprotocetraric acid failed to show any pesticidal properties, which is likely due to the fact that it is a relatively weak antifeedant, and could therefore be easily metabolized by the bean beetles before causing any harm to them.
Anna Carrier , Allina Decker | Henderson County High School - Henderson, KentuckyGrade-11 Project Number- 350Title: PFAS Contamination in KentuckyView Project e-Portfolio--Background: Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of more than 15,000 ubiquitous, persistent, man-made chemicals used in numerous industrial applications and consumer products. A variety of negative health outcomes are associated with PFAS exposure including cardiovascular disease, altered liver dysfunction, and cancer. More than 4.600 public and private water systems, located in all 50 states have been found to be contaminated by PFAS, including Kentucky. Thus, exposure to PFAS is major public health concern. In Henderson, Kentucky an underground water aquifer was found to be contaminated with PFAS with the contamination contributed to a nearby PFAS recycling plant. To begin to address the Community’s concern, we have formed a partnership with Henderson County High School Science Club, working with teachers and high school students to conduct PFAS sampling and disseminate information on health impacts of PFAS exposure to the community. Methods: The research team created
Ellen Kim | West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-11 Project Number- 351Title: Effect of the salt on the surface pressure of the polymer lung surfactant: Surface pressure-Area Isotherm approachView Project e-Portfolio--Polymer Lung Surfactant (PLS), comprising amphiphilic block copolymers, offers promise for lung surfactant replacement therapy by reducing air-water interfacial tension, akin to natural lung surfactants. To comprehensively understand factors influencing PLS surface pressure, I investigated salt solutions instead of pure water for Surface Pressure-Area Isotherm measurements. The hypothesis suggested that salt-treated PLS would exhibit higher surface pressure since salt ions can affect the interaction between water molecules and PLS molecules. This study focused on the influence of salts on PLS surface pressure, using Sodium Chloride, Calcium Chloride, and Sodium Sulfate. By varying salt concentrations while keeping cation or anion concentrations constant, I discerned that total ion concentration predominantly affects PLS surface pressure. Dynamic Light Scattering revealed salt concentration impacts on PLS nanoparticle size. Higher salt concentration lowered the size of the PLS Nanoparticle, which could potentially Increase drug delivery efficiency. Despite analyzing hydration numbers, no correlation with the horizontal shift of the area-isotherm curve was found. Notably, the shift factor showed a nonlinear and inverse dependence on salt concentration.
Gavin Ruan | West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-11 Project Number- 352Title: Where to Build Food Banks and Pantries: A Robust Machine Learning ApproachView Project e-Portfolio--Food insecurity is an extremely pressing issue in the United States, with over 44 million food insecure people. Food banks and pantries are two of the most important methods utilized to fight food insecurity, with over 49 million people turning to food programs in 2022. By increasing accessibility to food pantries and banks, the burden of food insecurity on families can be significantly lessened as they gain reliable access to food and other vital resources. The aim of the project is to create a machine learning application that is able to quickly and effectively optimize food bank and pantry locations in a hierarchical manner such that the distances between houses and food banks and pantries are less than that of real banks and pantries.. The application works with two levels of hierarchy, with the first one being top level food banks and the second one being partnered food agencies and pantries. The application utilized a robust k-medoids algorithm in conjunction with a distance matrix generated by the Open Source Routing Machine routing engine. A sampled dataset comprising households from a government GIS survey was sampled and used for both the initial clustering and later comparisons. A total of 11 food banks and 176 pantries were generated by the application, to compare against an equal number of food banks and pantries. The application proved to be both effective and successful. An average of 2.63 miles was saved regarding the distances between houses and food banks on the first level. Across all areas, an average of 3.52 miles was saved on the second level regarding the distances between houses and their closest food pantries, with average savings ranging from 2.17 to 8 miles.
Nabil Snighdho | West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-11 Project Number- 353Title: Effects of Metalloprotease Inhibition on Cyanobacteria Growth and MetabolismView Project e-Portfolio--Proteases are enzymes which break down unnecessary proteins in order to maintain homeostasis. If these enzymes aren’t able to properly function, it can lead to protein aggregation, which leads to many diseases and often causes cell death. In cyanobacteria, proteases are vital to deconstructing the nitrogen fixing proteins produced during the nighttime. In this experiment, however, the viability and protein concentrations of Crocosphaera subtropica kept in constant light is tested in the presence of metalloprotease inhibitor 1,10-phenanthroline monohydrate (1,10-PTM). The purpose of this experiment is to further understand the effects of proteases in organisms, specifically cyanobacteria, as we were not able to find any literature on the usage of 1,10-PTM on cyanobacteria. First, the cyanobacteria was placed in differing concentrations of 1,10-PTM for 1 hour and 24 hours in order to find at what concentration there would be a statistical difference in cell viability, which was found to be 7.5 µM for 24 hours. A mass spectrometer was then used in order to test the difference in protein abundances between the 7.5 µM sample and an untreated sample. We identified hundreds of proteins in each sample. For some proteins, there was a significant increase in abundance among the treated samples. For example, PtsS1, a Phosphate-binding protein, was significantly more present in the treated samples. However, other proteins were less prevalent in the treated samples, such as flavoproteins Cce_3833 and Cce_3835. These differences and related pathways those proteins carry out will be further discussed in the presentation.
Chase Barker | Terre Haute North Vigo High School - Terre Haute, IndianaGrade-11 Project Number- 354Title: The Effect of Winglets on the Coefficients of Lift and DragView Project e-Portfolio--Winglets are placed on the end of an aircraft's wings to mitigate wingtip vortices. This experiment was performed in order to determine if adding winglets to an airfoil has an effect on the lift and drag coefficients of that airfoil. Using one airfoil without winglets and three airfoils with winglets, I tested the hypothesis that the addition of winglets to an airfoil will increase the lift coefficient while also decreasing the drag coefficient of that airfoil. The four airfoil models were tested in a homemade wind tunnel; a scale was used to measure the lift and the drag force was measured by measuring the angle at which the airfoils attached to a string were pushed back. Compared to the airfoil without winglets the airfoils with winglets had up to a 9.56% greater lift coefficient. At a 15 degree angle of attack the airfoil without winglets had a drag coefficient of 0.0561 and the airfoil with vertical winglets had a drag coefficient of 0.0516 showing an 8.35% difference. This study showed that winglets on an airfoil increase the lift coefficients and decrease the drag coefficients of that airfoil, rejecting the null hypothesis that winglets have no effect on lift and drag coefficients.
Nathaniel Kemme Nash | Concordia Lutheran High School - Fort Wayne, INGrade-11 Project Number- 355Title: Developing the Javaish Programming LanguageView Project e-Portfolio--This project explores the possibility of making a programming language that looks more like English and is easier for beginners to learn. Learning a programming language can be difficult, especially for beginners. I took inspiration from Java, Python, JavaScript, and English for the grammar of my language and called it Javaish. Javaish is a statically typed, interpreted language that is designed to be more readable and understandable than traditional programming languages while still providing the same functionality. Javaish has the potential to make programming more accessible to a wider range of people. Javaish has all the fundamentals of a programming language: a parser, an interpreter, and an integrated development environment (IDE), but it also has a translator, debugger, and robot integration which makes it a better choice for beginners. After writing a custom parser and interpreter for the language, I made an IDE in the form of a website. The website's frontend was built with React and the backend was powered by Firebase. I then added the ability to convert the code from Javaish to Java and Python and added a dictionary on the IDE to learn the syntax of Javaish. I built a custom line-by-line debugger to make it really easy for a beginner to visualize in what order the code is being run in. The last feature added to the IDE was the creation of a Python server to allow Javaish to control an NAO robot.
Aarav Patel | Warsaw Community HS - Warsaw, IndianaGrade-11 Project Number- 356Title: Carbon Dioxide TrackerView Project e-Portfolio--
Anika Gera | Terre Haute South Vigo High School - Terre Haute, IndianaGrade-11 Project Number- 357Title: Role of the conserved cardiogenic Drosophila Forkhead box (Fox) transcription factor CHES-1-like in alary muscle development to understand congenital heart disease (CHD) in humansView Project e-Portfolio-- Mutations in four genes encoding Forkhead box (Fox) transcription factors (TFs) cause congenital heart disease (CHD) in humans. The remarkable evolutionary conservation of embryonic heart developmental processes between mammals and Drosophila suggests that examining the role of Fox genes in cardiogenesis in the latter may shed light on CHDs in humans. Prior work using Drosophila had identified a conserved role of Fox genes in mediating cardiac progenitor cell division in humans. The goal of this experiment was to determine if the Drosophila Fox gene CHES-1-like, in addition to mediating cardiac cell division, plays any role in the development of alary muscles (AMs), structures which are essential for supporting the heart, stabilizing its location, maintaining its lumen, and controlling valve opening and heart beating. 40 wild-type Drosophila embryos and 60 CHES-1-like null mutant embryos were stained with antibodies against Mef-2 (to detect the heart) and beta galactosidase (to detect org-1-lacZ-expressing AMs) and compared under a microscope. Of the CHES-1-like null mutants examined, 66.67% exhibited normal AMs, 15.00% exhibited thick and bifurcating AMs, 10.00% exhibited truncated AMs, and 8.33% exhibited AMs crossing one another compared to 95.00%, 5.00%, 0.00%, and 0.00% respectively in the 40 wild-type embryos. CHES-1-like null mutants exhibit significantly more AM defects than wild-type embryos, indicating that this Fox gene is necessary for AM development. It raises the possibility that Fox genes could play a similar evolutionary conserved role in the development of structures supporting the heart in humans.
Emily Archambeault | Marian High School - Osceola, IndianaGrade-11 Project Number- 358Title: The Impact of Chemotherapy on APC Knockout Cells in Breast CancerView Project e-Portfolio-- Around the world, men and women suffer from breast cancer, and it is important for scientists to learn more about this disease to further improve the lives of others. The cell biology of cancer is still unfamiliar to most people as well. This research project focuses on the impact of paclitaxel and doxorubicin chemotherapy on human breast cancer cells. Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) was used as a negative control on the MDA-MB-231 cells. APC acts as a tumor suppressor, so knocking out the APC gene in cancerous cells using CRISPR should impose resistance to chemotherapy. The cell lines produced and used are NTC12, 4L14, 4L15, 4L21, and 4L36. However, after pursuing four replicates of a clonogenic assay, it's concluded that both the NTC (non-targeting control) and the APCKO cell lines show a positive response to the chemotherapy. Meaning, their colony counts often decreased after paclitaxel or doxorubicin was treated on them. To study the molecular mechanism of breast cancer, western blotting was performed to learn about the Akt proteins in the cancer cells. Since the Akt proteins promote cell proliferation and pAkt contributes to radioresistance, it's important to note how they behave. It was discovered that the amount of pAkt and Akt relative to actin was much higher in 4L14 than NTC12. Meaning, cancer is more likely to thrive in the environment of a cell line without APC. Given that the hypothesis was refuted, proceeding in another TIC population investigation like an Aldefluor assay would be deemed useful for this project.
Lydia Choi | Marian High School - Granger, INGrade-11 Project Number- 359Title: Evaluating Polymorphism rs762551's Role on Caffeine Metabolism and Effect on Coffee HabitsView Project e-Portfolio--All individuals have the gene for caffeine metabolism: CYP1A2. Within this gene there is a polymorphism, known as polymorphism rs762551, which determines the speed of which one metabolizes caffeine. From this polymorphism, there are three possible caffeine metabolism genotypes which an individual may have. These genotypes are: AA, AC, and CC. Those with the genotype of AA are known as “fast caffeine metabolizers," meaning they metabolize caffeine at a relatively quick pace. Those with the genotype of AC are "medium caffeine metabolizers," meaning they metabolize caffeine at an average rate. Finally, those with the genotype of CC are known as "slow caffeine metabolizers," who metabolize caffeine at the slowest rate between all three genotypes. Genotypes AC and CC are slower at metabolizing caffeine than genotype AA due to the presence of the C allele within the genotype, which slows down the metabolic rate for caffeine. This research focuses on identifying links between one's caffeine metabolism genotype and their coffee drinking behaviors/habits. This research is important because it provides insight on whether caffeine metabolism genotypes impact the coffee habits of individuals. Whether there is a direct correlation between the two or not was determined from this experiment. The hypothesis was that there would be a correlation between one's caffeine metabolism genotype and their coffee behaviors. The results of this project do not support the hypothesis as most of the results concluded none or very little correlation between one's coffee behaviors and their caffeine metabolism genotype.
Kaleb Johnson | Marian High School - Mishawaka, INGrade-11 Project Number- 360Title: Observing the Impact of Hatchling Number on Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) DietView Project e-Portfolio--The national bird of the United States was listed as an endangered species just over 50 years ago. The Bald Eagle is an important species culturally and in its ecosystem, being an apex predator and a scavenger. Studying the eagle’s diet was a primary reason for the eagle’s comeback in the late 1900s. This project takes analyzing Bald Eagle diets further than most. In the project a pair of nesting Bald Eagles and their three eggs are viewed daily for three months using an in-nest cam that takes multiple photos every hour. The purpose of this project was to further our understanding of nesting eagle diets, and have more results to compare to a past study. Each prey item brought to the nest was recorded in a spreadsheet along with the date, time, and diagnostic images for identification. Each item was also given a general identification and then a specific identification of the certain species of animal the prey item was. Although the results did not directly support the hypothesis, there is much to learn from this project. Many variables may affect the results such as inaccurate recording, too small of sample size, and seasonality. The data provided by this project will help future researchers better their understanding of the Bald Eagle diet, possible variables, and ways to improve observation.
Charlotte Kemble | Marian High School - Mishawaka, INGrade-11 Project Number- 361Title: Exploring the Growing Threat of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus and the Potential of BacteriophagesView Project e-Portfolio--Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) poses a significant global health threat due to its resistance to multiple antibiotics, making treatment challenging and leading to increased morbidity and mortality rates. This project aims to investigate the growing prevalence of MRSA infections and explore alternative therapeutic approaches, focusing on the potential of bacteriophages as a promising treatment strategy. Through comprehensive literature review and empirical research, this study examines the mechanisms of MRSA resistance and the factors contributing to its spread in healthcare settings and communities. Moreover, it delves into the current limitations of antibiotic therapy and the urgent need for novel interventions to combat MRSA infections. Furthermore, this project evaluates the potential of bacteriophages, viruses that specifically target and lyse bacterial cells, as an alternative or adjunctive therapy against MRSA. By elucidating the efficacy, safety, and practical considerations of bacteriophage therapy, this research seeks to provide insights into its feasibility as a viable treatment option for MRSA infections. The findings of this study have implications for clinical practice, public health policy, and future research directions in the ongoing battle against antimicrobial resistance. Ultimately, this research endeavors to contribute to the development of innovative strategies for managing MRSA infections and addressing the evolving challenges posed by multidrug-resistant pathogens.
Leo Sheraton | Marian High School - Lakeville, IndianaGrade-11 Project Number- 362Title: Measuring the Infrared Transmission of Antiferromagnetic Semiconductors View Project e-Portfolio--Computer chips are at the source of modern day technology. One of today’s most important pieces of technology has two major drawbacks: heat dissipation and space. In my project, I aim to substitute the regular ferromagnetic semiconductors used in computer chips with an antiferromagnetic semiconductor. Antiferromagnetic semiconductors do not have the drawback of a magnetic field, but still retain the basic versatility of your average semiconductor. Because of their lack of a magnetic field, we are able to place them closer together without them interfering with each other’s data storage process. I tested the materials EuIn2As2 and MnTe to find their band gap, which signifies how easily they can be turned from insulators to conductors, which is what allows them to moderate electrical currents in the computer chips. I did this by using FTIR spectroscopy to measure the relative transmission of the samples; the relative transmission was the tested material’s wavenumber divided by the substrate’s wave number. The MnTe samples had the smallest band gap shown. My project is important fundamentally because of the topic’s overall and relatively new information it’s providing, as the information for tuning (the act of modifying the semiconductor wafer) these antiferromagnets is relatively non-existent. And in the eyes of an everyday person, this can affect your everyday technology; for example, by optimizing the space taken up by the chip, your average phone storage can be greatly increased without increasing the space needed for such an upgrade. In the future, I would like to test other materials, or even help the development and implementation of these chips, and test them to see how they would fare in regular use.
Sa'Niya Griffin | East Central Region Home Schools - Muncie, INGrade-11 Project Number- 364Title: Serum Albumin Nanoparticles for Enzymatic Delivery of Near Infrared Ionic Anticancer DrugView Project e-Portfolio--Developments in cancer therapy have resulted in various drug delivery agents. The use of nanoparticles from human serum albumin (HSA) for drug delivery have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because they are biocompatible and biodegradable. This study focused on evaluation of HSA nanoparticles for encapsulation of near infrared (NIR) ionic dye, infrared 780 ascorbate (IR 780 Asc), for therapeutic application against cancer. Studies show that IR 780 Asc has selective toxicity to tumor mitochondria. Anion exchange reaction was used for the synthesis of IR 780 Asc. The photophysical properties were determined using ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) and fluorescence spectroscopy. A desolvation method was used to synthesize HSA nanoparticles encapsulating the IR 780 Asc with a particle size of 150 nanometers (nm) using 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDC) as the crosslinker. The release of the IR 780 Asc therapeutic agent from HSA nanoparticles was achieved by the enzymatic action of collagenase, a metalloproteinase that is overexpressed in tumor cells. This study demonstrates the potential application of HSA nanoparticles for drug delivery system and enzymatic release of the encapsulated IR 780 Asc therapeutic agent with selective toxicity against cancer cells. Key: IR-780 iodide: 2-[2-[2-Chloro-3-[(1,3-dihydro-3,3-dimethyl-1-propyl-2H-indol-2-ylidene)ethylidene]-1-cyclohexen-1-yl]ethenyl]-3,3-dimethyl-1-propylindolium iodide
Jamar Clark | East Central Region Home Schools - Muncie, INGrade-11 Project Number- 365Title: Encapsulation of Near Infrared Anticancer Drug in Protein-based Nanoparticles for TheranosticsView Project e-Portfolio--Cancer is the leading cause of mortality all over the world. The development of effective therapeutic agents that can simultaneously be used in tumor diagnosis is highly desirable. This study focused on evaluation of HSA nanoparticles for encapsulation of near infrared (NIR) ionic dye, IR 780 tetraphenyl borate (IR 780 TPB), for tumor imaging and therapeutic application against cancer. Studies show that IR 780 TPB has selective toxicity to tumor mitochondria. Anion exchange reaction between IR 780 iodide (IR780 I) and sodium tetraphenyl borate (NaTPB) was used for the synthesis of IR 780 TPB. The photophysical properties were determined using ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) and fluorescence spectroscopy. Results indicated that IR 780 TPB absorbs and emits near infrared light which is useful for diagnosis and photothermal therapy upon laser irradiation. Synthesis of HSA nanoparticles with a size of 150 nanometers (nm) encapsulating IR 780 TPB was carried out by desolvation method using1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDC) as the crosslinker. The choice of nanoparticles from human serum albumin (HSA) for drug delivery is due to their biocompatibility and biodegradability. This study demonstrates the potential application of HSA nanoparticles for delivery of simultaneous diagnostic and therapeutic agent (IR 780 TPB) with selective toxicity against cancer cells. In addition, the photothermal heating of the IR780 TPB upon laser irradiation provides synergistic treatment of tumors which is expected to improve the therapeutic outcome. Key: IR-780 iodide: 2-[2-[2-Chloro-3-[(1,3-dihydro-3,3-dimethyl-1-propyl-2H-indol-2-ylidene)ethylidene]-1-cyclohexen-1-yl]ethenyl]-3,3-dimethyl-1-propylindolium iodide
Rohan Bhosale | Carmel High School - Carmel, IndianaGrade-11 Project Number- 366Title: Novel Complementary and Alternative Medicines (CAM) to mollify Long COVID (LC) and Post-COVID Conditions (PCC) using Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) – A systematic Ethnopharmacology StudyView Project e-Portfolio--Despite a surge in sales and consumption of natural supplements in the last 3 years, the science behind the impact of natural supplements against Long COVID (LC) and Post-COVID Conditions (PCC) is still poorly studied. Hence, it’s important to assess the science behind the safety and bioavailability of simultaneous intake of supplements. Natural product databases (COCONUT) were researched to identify natural molecules to help with LC-PCC. The molecules were then prioritized based on their reported bioactivity using the PASS database. 24 selected water and ethanol extracts were prepared and assessed using in vitro assays for their antioxidation, lipid peroxidation, protein-denaturation, and proteinase inhibition properties using a homemade spectrophotometer. The synergy and antagonism were further studied using various dose combinations prepared using statistical DoE and analyzed by Synergy Finder 3.0 to generate an interactive visualization of multi-extract multi-dose combination response data. The data generated revealed varying degrees of synergy and antagonism which was then studied for dynamic in vitro digestibility, lab-on-chip, and plant-based ADME kinetics using Vigna radiata. The identified mix of the top three extracts (turmeric, green tea, and cayenne pepper) was characterized using TLC & LC-MS. Time-dependent change in Curcumin, EGCG, and Capsaicin concentrations supplied as a mixture between three compartments was studied. Kinetic parameters, studied by PK Solver, demonstrated previously published trends. Overall, the queries about taking multiple supplements were experimentally answered, which can help accelerate natural product research without the use of drug discovery resources.
Sophia Fu | Carmel High School - Carmel, Indiana Grade-11 Project Number- 367Title: Balancing Misclassification Costs (BMC) in Imbalanced Classification View Project e-Portfolio--Classification tasks in machine learning, essential for applications ranging from fraud detection to medical diagnoses, frequently encounter the challenge of imbalanced datasets. These imbalances can skew predictions towards the majority class, risking oversight of vital minority instances and carrying significant real-world consequences. Established methods, such as Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machines, and ensemble techniques, offer solutions to classification challenges but often struggle with imbalanced datasets. Conventional strategies like resampling and cost-sensitive learning provide value but come with issues like overfitting, data loss, and increased computational demands. A notable disconnect also exists between estimation procedures and evaluation metrics, further complicating the task of accurately gauging model performance. In this work, we present the Balancing Misclassification Costs (BMC) algorithm, an innovative approach designed to adeptly tackle the challenges posed by imbalanced datasets. Our method integrates misclassification costs within a unified optimization framework. Capitalizing on rigorous theoretical proof, we have also devised an efficient estimation procedure. Through detailed simulations and its application to a cancer diagnostic dataset, we underscore BMC's superiority over conventional methodologies.
Sophia Lin | Signature School Inc - Evansville, INGrade-11 Project Number- 368Title: Effects of restorative materials, colors, and surface finishing on the scanning accuracy of an intraoral scannerView Project e-Portfolio--While the current literature investigates various factors influencing intraoral scan accuracy, it often overlooks the specific impacts of different restorative materials, colors, and surface finishes. This study aimed to fill this gap by assessing the effect of various restorative materials, prosthesis colors, and their surface finishes on the accuracy of intraoral scans performed with a TRIOS 4 scanner. Using a 4×2×2 factorial experimental design, the research analyzed how metal-ceramic, zirconia, lithium disilicate, and milled PMMA; shades B1 and A4; and surface finishes (either polishing or glazing) influence the trueness and precision of scans. The trueness and precision were quantified using root mean square (RMS) values. Significant differences in scan accuracy were observed, contingent on material, color, and finishing, along with notable interactions between these factors. The study established a detailed hierarchy of materials, underscoring the superior trueness of PMMA and the outstanding precision of zirconia across varied conditions. The findings indicate that the choice of restorative material, color, and surface finish profoundly affects the accuracy of intraoral digital impressions, underlining the necessity for customized scanning protocols to enhance clinical outcomes.
Qinyu Zheng | Culver Academies - Culver, INGrade-11 Project Number- 369Title: Design of Jellyfish-Inspired Robot for Coral Ecosystem Protection and RestorationView Project e-Portfolio--Coral reefs, hosting over 25% of all marine species on less than 1% of the ocean floor, are bleaching and dying due to the increased thermal variations caused by climate change. Among the survivors are "super corals" that have acclimatized resilience against such stressors. To prevent coral bleaching and speed up the evolutionary processes of "super corals," I have developed a bioinspired robotic jellyfish, which can facilitate the process of collection and dissemination of "super corals" gametes and the deployment of larval settlement substrates. The robot mimics the gentle movement of jellyfish, aiming to cause minimal ecological disruption. This study presents three iterations of the robotic prototype: The first iteration employs a servo-actuated system that coils in and out the string to release and contract the wings; the subsequent models adopt a direct motor linkage to the wings for propulsion. Compared to servo systems, motor actuation offers greater stability and controllability because it’s challenging to control the speed of servos. Furthermore, I have evaluated various construction materials for the robotic fins, comparing rigid 3D-printed components and flexible PVC membranes. By designing a bend constraint on the fins, motion counteraction observed in the first-version experimental trials was minimized. This increased the moving efficiency of the robot. Additionally, I have included operational functions in the design, allowing the robot to collect buoyant gametes and dispense larval substrates with its vertical and rotational capabilities. Looking forward, I plan to integrate a camera system and implement algorithmic gamete detection to further automate the robot.
Liangtao Song | Culver Academies - CULVER, IndianaGrade-11 Project Number- 370Title: Identification of New Differentially Expressed Genes of Esophageal CancerView Project e-Portfolio--Esophageal cancer (ESCA) is a type of gastrointestinal malignancy. It has one of the lowest survival rates among all types of cancer. Exploring ESCA related genes can help reveal the mechanism of ESCA occurrence and development and develop new diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets. In the current study, three genes including ADCY3, CAB39L and TCOF1 were identified by bioinformatics analysis to show differential expression in ESCA and the adjacent normal tissues. Among the three genes, ADCY3 and TCOF1 were up-regulated, whereas CAB39L was down-regulated in the cancerous tissues. Survival analysis suggests that the expression levels of these genes have no impact on overall survival when analyzed individually. However, in combination analysis, patients with low expression of ADCY3 but high expression of TCOF1 show severe adverse outcomes with the lowest survival level. Therefore, the result suggests the combination of these genes could act as biomarkers for prognostic evaluation. Keywords: Esophageal cancer; ADCY3; CAB39L; TCOF1; differential expression.
Minran Wang | Culver Academies - Culver, INDIANAGrade-11 Project Number- 371Title: FlexiSpine: An Adaptive Robotic Brace for Personalized Spinal Deformity TreatmentView Project e-Portfolio--Spinal deformity is usually a symptom cause by scoliosis. The current method of treating such disease is through a brace that fits around torso and hip[1] to force the spine to display the normal curvature. The traditional bracing imposes several limitations due to their rigid, static, and sensor-less designs and inability to adapt to changes in the skeletal system in accordance to treatment. Forces and moments exerted by the brace cannot be measured or modulated, and the three-dimensional stiffness of the human torso has not been characterized, which are all crucial factors to be considered in bracing treatment. In the recent years, the concept of robotic spine exoskeleton[2] is introduced to improve on the conventional bracing. This paper described the building of construction and control architectures for an active Thora-columbo-sacral orthosis for the correction of spinal deformities including scoliosis, kyphosis, and lordosis. The exoskeleton is composed of two Stewart-Gough platforms in series, each controlled independently the position. The position and the motion of the different region of spine could be controlled through each platform utilizing the six linear actuators. An AI agent is applied to analyze the severity of the deformities, and perform recommended treatment that change correspond to the skeletal system. Index Terms—Human torso stiffness, spine deformity, robotic spine brace, exoskeleton, AI
Haowei Hua | Culver Academies - culver, indianaGrade-11 Project Number- 372Title: Design of autism screening system based on graph structure learning and multi-task graph embedding learningView Project e-Portfolio--Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition, and early detection is crucial for enhancing life quality and providing timely interventions. This research advances a novel machine learning approach that synergistically combines different data modalities to augment early ASD diagnosis accuracy. We harness the ABIDE I dataset, encompassing MRI scans, processed connectomes, and demographic data from both ASD individuals and neurotypical controls. Our methodology bifurcates the MRI data analysis into two streams: a 2D graph-based approach utilizing the state-of-the-art Multi-View Spectral Graph Convolutional Network (MVS-GCN) and a 3D approach employing traditional Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs). These are subsequently integrated via a rule-based ensemble to leverage the strengths of each individual model. Furthermore, phenotypic attributes such as age, sex, and Full-Scale Intelligence Quotient (FIQ) are examined using various algorithms, with Naïve Bayes emerging as the most efficacious based on our evaluation metrics. A weighted fusion strategy is employed to amalgamate these insights, resulting in a substantial improvement in predictive performance. The models are rigorously evaluated using a suite of metrics, including F1-score, Precision, Recall, and Accuracy. Our integrated model demonstrates a notable 10% increase in accuracy over the MVS-GCN baseline, achieving a 79% accuracy rate. This study contributes to the ASD diagnostic field by presenting an innovative, multi-faceted analytical framework that enhances predictive outcomes without altering the intrinsic architecture of the underlying models and by making full use of the available data spectrum.
Zitong Zhou | Culver Academies - Culver, IndianaGrade-11 Project Number- 373Title: Bending Shape Self Sensing Pneumatic Grasper: Intelligent Evolution of Soft RobotsView Project e-Portfolio--Soft robots, known for flexibility and adaptability, surpass traditional rigid counterparts in tasks involving delicacy or confined spaces. However, the integration of conventional industrial sensors into pneumatic soft robots presents a significant challenge. This project introduces a soft pneumatic grasper with self-shape perception through integrated flexible sensors, marking a significant advance in soft robot intelligence. Employing bionic design principles, the robot's structure was optimized via physical simulation using COMSOL Multiphysics. A stretchable resistive sensor, responsive to robot deformations, is integrated into the side of the robot, and a mathematical model correlates sensor resistance changes to shape alterations. An Arduino-based actuator detects these changes, transmitting data to an embedded device for real-time visualizations. This integration of self-perception and visualization signifies a remarkable stride in enhancing soft robotic capabilities, holding promise for applications in diverse fields.
Charles Kallok | Lafayette Jefferson High School - Lafayette, INGrade-11 Project Number- 374Title: Regulation of Mg+2 transport in SalmonellaView Project e-Portfolio--Salmonella enterica has three Mg+2 transports: MgtA, MgtB, and CorA. mgtA and mgtB expression is regulated by Mg+2 availability. Transcription of mgtB and mgtA is greatly increased by starvation of Mg+2. The strains tested were mgtB+ and mgtB-, where both strains had about a tenfold increase in expression of the mgtB-lacZ fusion in the 0.01 mM and 0.1 mM Mg+2 concentration relative to the expression in the 1 mM Mg+2. There was no statistically significant difference in the expression of the mgtB-lacZ fusion at any of the Mg2+ concentrations tested in the mgtB- and mgtB+ strains. Results suggest that the MgtB protein is not needed for that accumulation of Mg2+ and the MgtA and/or CorA transporters are sufficient for this task at the Mg2+ concentrations tested.
Landon Fehrenbacher | New Tech Institute - Evansville, IndianaGrade-11 Project Number- 375Title: A.I. GuardianView Project e-Portfolio--Integrated artificial intelligence (AI) in robotics for defense purposes can protect people from dangers such as active shooter situations and has faster response time than law enforcement with it being on site. This project utilized a data set of images to train an AI detection vision system. The system was used to locate where the threat was and sent the location to the robot to find the threat. Once the threat is in sight of the robot's vision system, it uses a lidar system to chase the person with the weapon while knowing the difference between threats and civilians. This system is not only designed for school applications but is modular based on the level of lethality of the situation it is going to be put in. This concept can help develop a more robust device that has a rapid response to threats in environments with many civils that could be hurt. Some of the things learned from this is to have a fully effective model for such devices it needs datasets in the tens of thousands of photos and that using a lidar to go towards a person with the weapon can help with the precision of the defense. Finally, what can be learned is that these systems can work alongside law enforcement to help take out threats.
Yutong(Crystal) Yang , Xinshu Shang, Jiashu Zhou | University High School of Indiana - Carmel, INGrade-11 Project Number- 376Title: Optimizing Transit Access Equity: A Case Study of Equity Credit Methodologies, Using Washington Metropolitan Area as An ExampleView Project e-Portfolio--This research project aims to optimize subsidy incentivization strategies in transit service of new regions to motivate accessibility equality by Equity Credit Methodologies. It explores the design of a fair subsidy distribution system to improve transportation equity and social well-being. In the United States, unequal access to the transportation system exacerbates social inequality. At the same time, heavy reliance on cars has also exposed the inaccessibility of public transportation, bringing side effects such as severe air pollution (climate change) and congestion. To close the gap in inequality of transportation access, our research focuses on how to design a fair subsidy distribution system for each income group, thereby optimizing transportation equity improvements and revenue for transportation service companies. We aim to construct a comprehensive framework that considers factors such as demographics, economic status, geographical location, and transportation accessibility of target areas and further analyze the impact of the proposed subsidy allocation. Our procedures include designing optimization models, collecting data, applying the models, and performing sensitivity analyses. Ultimately, the goal is to incorporate carbon credit measures into the subsidy system by allocating individual emission credits to citizens using public transport. This allows companies that need carbon credits to receive them from individuals, thereby paying for subsidies from transport companies or governments. This comprehensive approach will not only help policymakers with subsidy allocation but also reduce inequalities in transport access. Also, it will promote important contributions in the areas of sustainable transport and emissions reduction.
Aubrey Alexander , Maryann Drerup, Isabel Perigo | Central Catholic Jr-Sr High School - Lafayette, INGrade-12 Project Number- 400Title: Chemical Check: Investigating Toxins in Period ProductsView Project e-Portfolio--Menstrual products, meant to maintain and support reproductive health, continue to be the subject of debate regarding the safety of their contents. With very few in depth studies, this issue persists as the safety and subsequent effects of menstrual products remains undefined. The primary objective of this study is to test various hygiene brands for harmful substances, with the goal of identifying the least harmful product through interpretation of the results. This will be done through the physical and chemical analysis of menstrual pads and tampons of a variety. Testing will include analytical techniques using mass spectrometry, gas-chromatography, and colorimetric analysis. Techniques such as these will provide the exact amount of a respective compound detected or a result indicating a general presence. The tests will identify within these products the existence of harmful substances such as phthalates, dioxins/furans, volatile organic compounds (VOC), parabens, phenols, and other similarly harmful compounds. Furthermore, based upon the results and taking into account long term exposure, the findings will indicate the “best” or safest brand choice of pads and tampons. The results and assessment of this study aim to provide insight into the potential presence and prevalence of harmful chemicals in menstrual products and the subsequent effect on reproductive health. Most importantly, with the findings of this experiment, we hope to raise awareness to the issue of potential toxicity in menstrual products, with the goal of inspiring every consumer to make an informed decision that leaves them feeling healthy in body and mind.
Ashleigh Blankenship | North Posey Sr High School - Evansville, IndianaGrade-12 Project Number- 401Title: Which Moisturizer is the Most Hydrating on the Skin?View Project e-Portfolio--In my project, I tested 3 moisturizers that were highly advertised in being very hydrating for the skin. I spread each moisturizer over 25 mL of gelatin and see which one weighed the most after a period of time to conclude which of the moisturizers kept the gelatin ? . My prediction was that Cerave will weigh the most and maintain the most height resulting in the best moisturizer. In this experiment, I tested Cerave, Holy Hydration, and Cetaphil moisturizers while also needing gelatin, petri dishes, hot plate, scale, measuring cups, and graduated cylinder. I made the gelatin and spread 10 mL of each moisturizer on top. I let it sit over a period of time and recorded which one maintained the most weight. Cerave was drastically the best because it consistently maintained the higher weight while Cetaphil barely beat holy hydration. Cerave has patented Multivesicular Emulsion (MVE) technology used in CeraVe products releases key ingredients slowly over time, allowing them to be absorbed into the skin to hydrate and nourish, as well as help repair, restore and maintain the skin's natural barrier. In my results, I compared the average percent change over different periods of time. Cerave overall is your best option if you are particularly looking for a very hydrating moisturizer.
Ashton Elpers | North Posey Sr High School - Haubstadt, INGrade-12 Project Number- 402Title: Will glucose levels affect peripheral vision?View Project e-Portfolio--The purpose of this experiment was to determine if glucose levels affect a person’s degree of peripheral vision. Previous research led to knowledge that glucose affects central vision, due to it mishappening the lens of the eyeball. Too much glucose in the eye can lead to glaucoma. Because I know that glucose misshapes the lens affecting central vision I wanted to see if it would affect the rods and cones that form peripheral vision. My hypothesis states, the more glucose in the blood the less peripheral vision one will have. I ran my experiment using a peripheral vision disk, a glucometer, and human participants. The participants would prick their own finger and test the glucose, then I would test their peripherals using the disk. I performed this procedure twice to each person: once in the morning with a fasting glucose level, and once in the afternoon an hour after the participant ate lunch. After running my experiment on 12 different adults, my hypothesis was supported. The more glucose one had in their blood the less peripheral vision that person had. This happened because of the way glucose misshapes the vessels, rods, and cones in the eye.
Reece Thompson | North Posey Sr High School - Wadesville, INGrade-12 Project Number- 403Title: Which Toothpaste is Better: Mint or Cinnamon?View Project e-Portfolio--The purpose of this experiment is to find out which toothpaste (cinnamon or mint), prevents bacterial growth better. The four different types of toothpaste used in this experiment include Crest Cinnamon, Crest Mint, Colgate Cinnamon, and Colgate Mint. In this experiment I spread bacteria all over Petri dishes, covering all of it, and put it in the incubator for a day. When I came back the day after that the bacteria was grown so I was ready to put the toothpaste on, I put 1 centimeter of cinnamon toothpaste on one side and 1 centimeter of mint on one side, each the same brand. I did this a total of three different times, which came out to be 24 trials. It was hypothesized that cinnamon toothpaste would prevent bacterial growth better than mint toothpaste. The results supported my hypothesis, with cinnamon toothpaste, both brands, preventing more/better bacterial growth on the dishes. It makes sense that the cinnamon toothpaste prevented the bacteria the best because it contains Cinnamaldehyde, which fights bacteria by damaging their cell walls and preventing cell division, thereby inhibiting bacterial growth.
Michelle Perez Ahuatl | Lafayette Jefferson High School - , Grade-12 Project Number- 404Title: Ampicillin-Induced Gut Microbiome Disruptions: A Comparative Gait Analysis in C57Bl6J Mice Treated with AntibioticsView Project e-Portfolio--In this study, we delve into the intricate relationship between antibiotic use, specifically ampicillin, and behavioral changes observed in mice, with a particular focus on alterations in stride characteristics as potential indicators of cognitive function. The gut microbiome, known for its pivotal role in various physiological processes, including cognition, has increasingly garnered attention for its susceptibility to disruption by antibiotics. By subjecting mice to ampicillin treatment and comparing them with control counterparts, we aim to elucidate the nuanced cognitive differences stemming from perturbations in gut microbial composition. Gait analysis serves as a cornerstone in our investigation, offering a holistic perspective on biomechanical dynamics at the organismal level. By meticulously scrutinizing parameters such as stride length, frequency, and symmetry, we seek to unravel subtle yet discernible alterations in motor function and coordination, which may reflect underlying changes in cognitive processing. Furthermore, the integration of behavioral outcomes with molecular and neurobiological assessments affords a comprehensive understanding of the intricate interplay between the gut microbiome and cognitive processes. Beyond its immediate implications, this research holds broader significance in elucidating the broader impact of antibiotics on neurological function. By extrapolating findings from gait analysis, we can delineate potential pathways through which antibiotic-induced alterations in the gut microbiome may influence central nervous system function. Moreover, insights garnered from this study pave the way for further investigations, encompassing smaller-scale biomechanical analyses and targeted experiments aimed at deciphering the mechanistic underpinnings of antibiotic-mediated neurobehavioral changes. In essence, this study represents a multifaceted endeavor aimed at unraveling the complex interrelationships between antibiotic use, gut microbiome disruption, and cognitive function. Through a combination of sophisticated behavioral assessments and molecular analyses, we endeavor to shed light on novel avenues for understanding and potentially mitigating the adverse effects of antibiotics on neurological health.
Ivan Villanueva Salinas | Lafayette Jefferson High School - Lafayette , IndianaGrade-12 Project Number- 405Title: Synthesis and Evaluation of Novel Potent Analogs of the Anticancer Agent Gefitinib for Treating Non-Small Cell Lung CancerView Project e-Portfolio--Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer death in the United States. I wanted to see if I could develop new analogs of anti-cancer agent gefitinib that are better for treating non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Gefitinib binds the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and this kills the NSCLC cells. I thought that by making changes to the groups on the benzene ring of gefitinib, I might make compounds that fit better into epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), that are then better able to kill NSCLC cells. By looking at the gefitinib binding place in EGFR, I was able to predict which of the six designed analogs might fit into the space the best. I ranked the analogs for best binding to EGFR as IV-Br, IV-Me > IV-I, IV-Cl2, IV-OMe > IV-4Cl3F. By making some small changes to a known procedure, I was able to successfully make the six analogs of gefitinib as seen from their 1H NMR spectrum compared to gefitinib. The six gefitinib analogs and gefinib were tested in a MTT cell viability assay with the NSCLC HCC827 cells. I found that the analogs that killed the NSCLC cells the best were IV-Br and IV-I, IV-Cl2 was similar to gefitinib, IV-Me and IV-OMe were worse than gefitinib, and IV-4Cl3F was the worst analog overall. My hypothesis was confirmed, I was able to make two analogs of gefitinib that were much more active at killing NSCLC cells. In the future I would definitely like to try to make more gefitinib analogs, and I would like to see if my analogs could kill cells in brain tumors.
Joshua Kim | West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School - West Lafayette, INGrade-12 Project Number- 406Title: Camouflaged and Biosafe QR Code Bioprinting and Protein Tagging: Combatting Medicine CounterfeitingView Project e-Portfolio--Online pharmacies and social media platforms are responsible for the growing presence of counterfeit medicines, and the verification and authentication of dosage levels are imperative for protecting individual medicines. However, the existing anticounterfeit methods for medicines and exterior box-level protection are often limited, and they focus on pharmaceutical supply chains instead of empowering patients. Here, bioprinting and taggant construction of camouflaged biosafe quick response (QR) codes are introduced for on-dose (or in-dose) medicine security, integrated with the dosage form. Machine-readable color QR codes contain concealed invisible patterns with biologically safe near-infrared absorption properties, which help enhance the security of conventional QR codes. The reported bioinkjet printing and protein taggant construction guarantee printability, imperceptibility, stability, biocompatibility, digestibility, and tamper resistance to be an inherent part of each unit of medicine in solid dosage formats. Camouflaged biosafe QR code taggants can offer various medicine security applications including anticounterfeit measures, authentication features, track-and-trace, and serialization at the dosage level. This approach is expected to empower patients to play an active role in fighting illicit medicines and pharmaceutical products.
Raunak Dani | West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-12 Project Number- 407Title: A Pyrrole Modified 3,4-propylenedioxythiophene (ProDOT) Conjugated Polymer as Hole Transport Materials for Efficient and Stable Perovskite Solar CellsView Project e-Portfolio--Despite the outstanding electric properties and low cost of Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) and its derivatives, their performance as hole transport layer (HTLs) materials in conventional n-i-p structure perovskite solar cells is less competitive than the widely used 2,2′,7,7′-tetrakis (N,N-di-p- methoxyphenylamine)-9,9′-spirobifluorene (Spiro-OMeTAD) or poly(triaryl amine) (PTAA), owing to their poor solubility and energy level mismatch. In this work, we report novel hole transporting materials (HTLs) based on 3,4-propylenedioxythiophene (ProDOT) for efficient perovskite solar cells (PSCs). As a result of the superior defects passivation ability, excellent contact with perovskite, improved conductivity and hole extraction process, and high hydrophobicity, the PSCs showed an impressive peak PCE of 21.49 %, along with outstanding moisture stability (over 4000 hours). This work provided the potential application of PEDOT or ProDOT-based materials as HTL for PSCs as well as shed light on the significance of the rational design of the HTL structure.
Zheng-Chi Lee | West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School - West Lafayette, IndianaGrade-12 Project Number- 408Title: Advancing early detection of kidney cancer (Year 3): A novel automated workflow for proteomic profiling of urinary extracellular vesiclesView Project e-Portfolio--Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC) is the world’s deadliest urological disease. Detection before metastasis can improve 5-year survival rates drastically, from 16% to 92%. However, current diagnostic methods for RCC are impractical for early detection (MRI, CT) and invasive (tissue biopsies). Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are a promising source of disease biomarkers for non-invasive early-stage diagnoses, but a bottleneck in EV sample processing restricts their immense potential. Existing methods have low EV yield and integrity, slow processing speeds, and low sample capacity. I aimed to address these issues with a high-throughput, automated workflow for EV isolation, EV lysis, protein extraction, and protein denaturation. The automation results in protein-covered beads ready for various analytical methods, including immunoassays, protein quantitation assays, and mass spectrometry. When I applied the workflow to clinical RCC patient samples, I identified a total of 3,793 unique proteins and 40,380 unique peptides, with 992 significantly upregulated proteins in RCC patients versus healthy controls. These potential biomarkers were involved in several important kidney cancer metabolic pathways also identified with a manual control. Compared to the standard manual protocol for contamination levels, efficiency, and consistency of EV isolation, the automated workflow shows reproducible and robust proteomic quantitation with less than 10% median coefficient of variation. The automation also holds 4X sample capacity, reduces manual labor by 6-10X, and expedites total processing speed by 2-3X. This hands-free workflow represents a practical EV extraction and profiling approach that can benefit both clinical and research applications, streamlining biomarker discovery, tumor monitoring, and early cancer diagnoses.
Blake Whitaker | Marian High School - South Bend, IndianaGrade-12 Project Number- 409Title: Mechanisms of Chemoresistance in Ovarian CancerView Project e-Portfolio--Ovarian cancer is one of the most common cancers found in women and is ranked fifth in cancer-related deaths in women. Treatment typically includes surgical removal of the tumor followed by a chemotherapeutic regimen including taxanes and platinums. While the chemotherapeutic intervention is often successful, many women develop resistance to these drugs. Past studies showed that loss of Adenomatous Polyposis Coli (APC) in human ovarian cancer cell lines resulted in the development of paclitaxel resistance. (APC) is a tumor suppressor protein that regulates gene expression, proliferation, differentiation, microtubule stability, DNA repair, and organization of the cytoskeleton. This study sought to understand the molecular mechanisms that caused the resistance to paclitaxel in the OVCAR5 and OVCAR8 cell lines and to see if APC loss also resulted in cisplatin resistance. The study demonstrated that APC knockout cells (APCKO) exhibited increased tumor initiating cell populations and upregulation of specific proteins. It was found that the expression of the pro-survival protein, Bcl-2, and the transcription factor, STAT3, are upregulated in the APCKO cells. This study also demonstrated that chemoresistance due to the loss of APC also occurs with cisplatin. These data have the potential to influence future treatment regimens for patients with ovarian cancer and point to APC expression as a predictor of response to chemotherapy.
Elijah Gorski | Harper School--RC3 - South Bend, IndianaGrade-12 Project Number- 410Title: Characterizing the pH dependent activity of SHP2 as a model for SH2 domain-containing proteinsView Project e-Portfolio--The intracellular pH (pHi) of mammalian epithelial cells ranges from 7.0 to 7.2, while transient changes in pHi (6.8 to 7.8) regulate normal cellular behaviors like cell-cycle progression, migration, and epithelial to mesenchymal transition. These cell behaviors are driven by proteins called pH sensors, that undergo large structural and functional changes with physiological changes in pHi. Previous work in the lab identified SHP2 as a pH sensor. The prior work showed that SHP2 uses H116 and E252 to confer its pH sensitive activity in vitro. Now, we show that this pH sensitive function can be recapitulated in MCF10A cells. Using Co-immunoprecipitation and western blot experiments, we show that SHP2 is pH sensitive inside cells and this pH sensitivity affects SHP2 activity and binding leading to downstream effects. Furthermore, we show that this pH sensitivity is conserved in other SH2 domain-containing proteins using computational methods. Because SH2 domains are structurally conserved, we predict that this pH-dependent mechanism is also conserved. Better understanding of how ionizable networks respond to pH will transform our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of novel pH sensitive proteins that mediate pH sensitive cell responses.
Ava Budak | Angola High School - Pleasant Lake, INGrade-12 Project Number- 411Title: Tomato Terroir: A Scientific Investigation into Lycopene Content Across Different Cultivation MethodsView Project e-Portfolio--In numerous studies, the positive effects of lycopene have been shown on a genetic and a cellular level. Having been said to be an antioxidant, cardioprotective, antihypercholesterolemic, antidiabetic, antimicrobial, photoprotector, and anticancer, the benefits of this naturally occurring carotenoid are obvious. These all lead me to believe that lycopene promotes health and prevents diseases. I wanted to raise awareness about the difference in tomatoes and educate people to make informed choices. Through this project, I’d be able to prove that cultivation methods impact the nutritional value of tomatoes. Would this lead farmers to engage with sustainable and healthier practices? This led me to my question: What is the impact of ripening methods, specifically comparing on-vine ripening, off-vine ripening, and homegrown vine ripening, on the lycopene content of commonly available tomato varieties in the market and those grown at home? First, the samples had to be prepared to be used, which involved removing the skin and seeds from the tomatoes, then crushing and straining them, adding water, and boiling. The testing procedure involved measuring a gram, and mixing it with acetone before filtering out the tomato’s content. Essentially, the goal was to obtain a homogenous mixture of acetone and lycopene from the tomato, without the fiber. Through these samples, I was able to get an absorbance measurement from each tomato from each group. I found that the lycopene levels in tomatoes exhibited a noticeable pattern. Homegrown tomatoes had the highest lycopene content, followed by store-bought hydroponically grown tomatoes. Subsequently, conventionally grown store-bought tomatoes demonstrated a higher lycopene content compared to vine-ripened, commercially grown ones. These findings show the impact of cultivation techniques and ripening methods on lycopene levels in tomatoes. This study conclusively proves that while consumers have various in-store options, the nutritional superiority of homegrown tomatoes is undeniable. It settles the longstanding debate regarding the equivalence of store-bought tomatoes to those grown at home, supported by evidence. It opens avenues for further exploration, suggesting potential cultivation methods like varying light sources in mass production facilities or experimenting with specialized soils for home growing. Undoubtedly, the implications of these findings go beyond the scope of this study, promising a significant domino effect for nutritional awareness and agricultural practices.
Olivia Woodcox | DeKalb High School - Auburn, INGrade-12 Project Number- 412Title: Empathy Towards Aggressor/Victim Dynamics and Male and Female StudentsView Project e-Portfolio-- In 2019, 28% of male high school students and 15% of female students surveyed by the National Institute of health admitted to getting into a physical fight sometime that year. The disparity between genders is often attributed to males being inherently more aggressive, several studies have shown that negative emotions such as anger and frustration are felt equally between the sexes, only expressed differently. A possible explanation as to why male students are more prone to physical displays of aggression could be the way male students perceive or justify aggression when compared to female students. This experiment hypothesized that if male and female students watch a video of a confrontation between an aggressive party and a non aggressive party, then female students would be more wary of the aggressor, while male students would make more of an attempt to empathize with the aggressor. Participants in this experiment were separated by gender and then asked to watch a 15 second video of two adult men in a verbal confrontation, with one party acting aggressively, while the other party becoming the “victim” of the aggressor’s anger. Participants were then asked several memory-based questions over the confrontation in order to measure where the participants were paying the most attention during the fight, as well as thought questions speculating into the background of the fight, how both parties were feeling, and which party was to blame for the confrontation. The results showed that female participants were able to recall more details regarding the physical appearance of both parties, while having a poorer memory of background details than male participants, suggesting the majority of female participants’ attention was focused on the fight, while male participants’s attention was divided equally on all parts of the video. When asked to empathize with the emotions of both parties, male students were more likely to give varied answers such as “hurt”, “scared”, “angry” or “calm” than female students, who almost uniformly described the aggressor as “angry” and were most likely to describe the non-aggressor as “calm”. 84% of male students and 93% of female students placed blame on the aggressor. Male and female students placed almost equal blame on the non aggressor, with 31% of male students and 30% of female students assigning fault on the non aggressor. The initial hypothesis of the experiment was correct, but by a smaller margin than anticipated. Male students were more likely to assume the role of “mediators” when viewing the confrontation, assuming shared blame and assigning a wider range of emotional reactions for both parties, while female students were more likely to pick sides, showing far less empathy towards the aggressor. A potential reasoning for the difference in perspective is the social conditioning that leads female students towards indirect displays of aggression, while male students are more freely allowed to participate in and therefore condone displays of direct aggression. This may explain why in real world confrontations, women are more likely to intervene than men despite the fact that men are more likely to be victims of physical aggression.
Matthias Hefty | DeKalb High School - Auburn, INGrade-12 Project Number- 413Title: Hoof Trimming - The Financial Burden Due to Heavy Labor CostsView Project e-Portfolio-- I raise Boer goats that constantly need their hooves trimmed to prevent lameness. However, to trim goat hooves it takes a lot of labor and physical exertion to properly trim one goat let alone multiple. This led to the purpose of my project which was to create a goat hoof trimming leg holder to make trimming goat hooves physically easier and save money through the reduction of labor. The methods of this project were measuring the different leg lengths of my goats and averaging the lengths to know what measurements to make within the goat hoof trimming leg holder. I then cut the correct lengths of the wooden boards and installed them together to make my design. My goal was to create a design that makes hoof trimming easier, quicker, cost-effective, and reduces labor by 30 minutes. The results showed that the goat hoof trimming leg holder was effective because it fit the sizes of all the different goat leg lengths and heights. The straps kept the goat legs secured while trimming and the top board was able to move to the correct angle. In conclusion the goat hoof trimming leg holder was highly effective as it only took one man to trim the hooves as the goats were unable to move their legs or bodies while their hooves were being trimmed. This cuts the labor by two-thirds, saving 30 minutes of trimming per goat. This saves $33.40 per goat each year which can help goat farmers increase their profits.
Ava Burns | Culver Academies - Chicago, IllinoisGrade-12 Project Number- 414Title: Effect of Varied mW on Photosynthetic Rates in Chlorella VulgarisView Project e-Portfolio--Increased carbon dioxide sequestering counteracts carbon fluxes into the atmosphere, and mitigates the disastrous effects of global warming. Photosynthetic organisms are a source of carbon fluxes out of the atmosphere, as a byproduct of energy produced in the electron transport chain. The electron transport chain is powered by electrons produced by NADH. NADH donates its electrons to the electron transport chain when it becomes NAD. This can be simulated through electrocution, which causes electrons to excite and repel one another. The goal of this project was to determine the effect of varied power on photosynthetic rates in Chlorella vulgaris. C. vulgaris is a common, hardy, freshwater algae with a high photosynthetic rate. This was done by measuring algal growth and carbon dioxide intake, when various power ranges were applied to the samples. These experiments were compared to a control group of C. vulgaris, grown with no electricity applied. The results showed that electricity had no correlation to either growth or carbon dioxide intake, leading to the conclusion that applied electricity has a negligible effect on the photosynthesis rates in C. vulgaris.
Grace Choi | Bloomington High School South - Bloomington, INGrade-12 Project Number- 415Title: Molecular dynamics and in silico mutagenesis on fibroblast growth factor 2 to improve receptor 1c binding affinity for tissue growth.View Project e-Portfolio--Fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) is a type of growth hormone that is broadly involved in a variety of signaling pathways such as in mitosis and angiogenesis. Emerging discoveries have started to highlight the promising application of FGF2 to various fields from agriculture to medicine such as improving bovine milk production on Hoosier farms or providing wound healing therapeutics. However, FGF2 is expensive and requires complicated chemical conditions to store. Therefore, we propose using computational methods to design a more efficient FGF2 to lower costs and amount of FGF2 needed for use. Machine learning was used to generate novel mutated structures of FGF2 which were then modeled in complex with a wild type receptor (FGFR1c), in a TIP3P solvation model. The mutation complexes were run through energy minimization and followed by isothermal-isobaric (NVT) equilibration in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Four main mutation models were analyzed: Q198T, E200P, R202V, and a fourth model that combined all three mutations (Q198T_E200P_R202V). The resulting molecular trajectories were analyzed with root mean square deviation (RMSD) plots and MM-PSBA binding energy calculations in comparison to a wild type ligand-receptor complex. The mutation models, especially Q198T and Q198T_E200P_R202V, resulted in a higher binding affinity than the wild type model, indicating the potential of the mutations to raise the efficiency of FGF2 for future applications.
Sama Zahran | Eman Schools - Fishers, IndianaGrade-12 Project Number- 417Title: The Role of Different Genes In Relation To Alzheimer's DiseaseView Project e-Portfolio--Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia and is characterized by memory loss and lack of ability to process information. AD is caused by a pathology in the brain is called amyloid plaque. Multiple genes have been identified as risk factor for late-onset AD. Recent data have demonstrated that enhanced expression of one of those genes, called INPP5D, are associated with increased amyloid pathology. INPP5D encodes for a protein named SHIP1, which modulates the phosphorylation of proteins in the microglia (or immune cells in the brain). The aim of this project was to investigate if blocking the activity of SHIP1 with three drugs (TAD32, TAD 388, and TAD 616) changes the level of phosphorylation of an intracellular protein named Akt in microglia tissue cultures. To investigate the effects of these drugs on the phosphorylation state of Akt, we used Western Blot procedure. The principle of this assay is to separate proteins by molecular weight to be able to measure the quantity of these proteins. To identify the total protein Akt and the Akt-phosphorylated, we used selective antibodies. Investigating if these novel compounds that are inhibitors of SHIP1 can change the phosphorylation of Akt, would be relevant to explore in future studies whether SHIP1 is a potential target to reduce amyloid pathology in AD.
Jihoon Kwon , Elena Budyak | Carmel High School - Carmel, INGrade-12 Project Number- 418Title: Advancing Alzheimer's Disease Research: Using VGG Convolutional Neural Network, Mice Models of AD, and PLCG2 Genetic Variants to Classify Alzheimer' s and Characterize Microglial Phenotype and Plaque Morphology View Project e-Portfolio--Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder and 7th leading cause of death. Hallmarks include amyloid-beta plaque buildup and the subsequent immune response by the microglia, in which both of the processes contribute to the neurotoxicity and oxidative stress that further exacerbates the neurodegeneration pathogenesis of Alzheimer's. Ongoing studies by Model Organism Development and Evaluation for Late-onset Alzheimer's Disease (MODEL-AD) gave rise to the 5xFAD and SAA mice models, and other studies show phospholipase C gamma 2 (PLCG2) genetic variants as possessing altered risk for Alzheimer's. This work investigates the effects of PLCG2 gene variants on the hallmarks of Alzheimer's like plaque morphology, microglial phenotypes, and immune response markers and compares them between the models. MRI image analysis can provide differential diagnosis, prognosis, and the progression and stages of Alzheimer's Disease. Physicians, however, are not always able to detect signs of Alzheimer's, especially during early stages. This highlights a need for the development of deep-learning network architecture that is able to provide those analysis results and assist humans in tracking Alzheimer's Disease progression. Using systematic data augmentation and training, F1 Score of 0.996 and AUC value of 0.994 was achieved, showing clinical significance and demonstrating proof of concept of its use for ex vivo staging during AD model behavioral research.