Anthony Rodd
arodd@uwyo.edu
The University of Wyoming invited jr. high and high school students from across the state Saturday and Monday for the Wyoming State Science Fair.
The students in attendance presented research projects in the form of posters on an area of personal scientific interest in one of 14 fields such as microbiology, engineering design and animal science.
Jonathan Hawkman, a graduate student in the geology department and one of the graduate assistant coordinators for the Wyoming State Science Fair, said roughly 300 students from around the state participated, including students from reservations and from small towns.
“We managed to get roughly 300 students to participate this year, quite an uptake from last, and that is not counting for all those who participated in regional science fairs,” Hawkman said.
Students’ projects included three dimensional design, factory pollution, energy producing waves and a vast variety of others.
Alexandria Matthews, a student from Wheatland, did her project on bacteria growth in school trumpets.
“I play the trumpet, and really wanted to see if they were dirty or not, so I decided to do some swabs and see if bacteria grew on a petri dish or not,” Alexandria said.
In addition to issues that effect or interest students personally, Hawkman said many students also pick issues that are effecting their community.
“Plenty of the students projects are influenced by bigger issues here in Wyoming such as wildlife migration, rangeland conservation, factory pollution, and a vast array of other in-state issues,” Hawkman said.
One such student was Dante Sylvester from Greybull, who did his project on the utilization of seed protocols to improve seed viability.
“My main influence for choosing this project was the mining companies two miles outside our town because this is going to help them grow vegetation and speed up reclamation,” he said.
While presenting projects the students posters were judged by a community of judges. Hawkman said judges included faculty, professors and visiting regional professionals, some of whom came from out of town.
“There is a pretty diverse constituency in the judging which is nice because then we end up seeing a pretty representative range of the interests and specialization that are included in the science fair,” Hawkman said.
While judges did score the projects, Hawkman said they also gave advice and supported all students no matter the potency or depth of their research because they want kids to stay excited about science.
“We want to help educate kids on science while also getting them excited about science,” Hawkman said. “The last thing we want to do is frustrate the student by providing nothing but negative criticism and a bad score card.”
The Wyoming State Science Fair will continue on through Tuesday when judges will deliberate the first, second and third place winners. The Senior division winners will have the chance to go on to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, and junior winners will have the chance to go on to the Broadcom MASTERS science fair.
