Students show, explain their projects
By Angie Landsverk
Science projects filled a Weyauwega-Fremont Middle School space during the school district’s annual K-8 Science Fair.
The event took place on Feb. 18, in the middle school cafetorium.
Lynn Ponto teaches science at W-F High School and said there were 84 projects and 98 participants in this year’s science fair.
Angie Landsverk Photo
Students chose a question or problem, came up with a hypothesis, did the experiment and then reported the results of their work.
They had to explain the outcome to the district staff and community members who evaluated their projects.
“I learned even though the sodas were the exact same size, volume and shape that their densities were different,” said Lexia Remington.
She is a fifth grader at Weyauwega Elementary, and her project was called “Soda Can Science.”
Remington thought cans of diet soda would float in water and cans of regular soda would sink because the cans of regular soda were heavier when she held them in her hand.
“My hypothesis was correct,” she said. “Diet sodas are less dense, so that’s why they float.”
Brand comparisons
Mason McIvor’s project was “Paper Towel Time.”
He is also a fifth grader at Weyauwega Elementary and chose three different brands of paper towel for his project.
“I chose paper towel as my project because of the many paper towel commercials I see on TV,” McIvor said.
The three brands he compared were Great Value, Sparkle and Bounty.
“I thought Great Value would be the best, because it looked thicker than the others,” he said.
McIvor did three trials with each brand.
His experiment involved spreading water over each piece of paper towel until it was completely covered.
Next McIvor picked up the piece and let the water drip from it for 30 seconds.
He then measured how much water dripped from the paper towel during that time period.
In his experiment, Bounty ended up being the best.
“Bounty is the real Quicker Picker Upper,” he noted.
McIvor likes science and had fun working on the project.
“This experiment is good to know if you want to know what paper towel holds the most liquid,” he said.
Tasty experiment
Seventh graders Avery Samz and Emma Hansen worked together on their project, “Tampering with Chocolate.”
They chose five different kinds of chocolate for their experiment – milk chocolate, dark chocolate, raw chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate and white chocolate.
Hansen said they wanted to find out which chocolate would harden the fastest.
“We thought milk chocolate would harden fastest,” Samz said.
That was their thought process because milk chocolate is used in most recipes, she said.
They melted one cup of each type of chocolate and then poured it onto plastic wrap and waited to see how long it took before it hardened.
The white chocolate hardened the fastest.
Samz and Hansen shared samples of chocolate with those who stopped to see their project.