Bees, trees, catapults and edible shirts won four St. Albert students fat cash and shots at national glory last weekend at a regional science tournament.
About 200 Edmonton-area students were at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology last weekend for the 57th annual Edmonton Regional Science Fair. The event challenged elementary, junior and senior high students to perform experiments for cash prizes and a shot at the national science fair.
Science champs
Sir George Simpson students Dana Pidsadowski, Robert Allen and Gabriel Nasr were three of the eight students who won the top prize of the event: a spot on Team Edmonton, which will represent this region next month at the Canada-Wide Science Fair.
"It was kind of crazy," said Pidsadowski of the win.
"To have the opportunity to go in front of the entire country, it's really not something everybody gets to do."
Pidsadowski's experiment examined the durability of kombucha fabric, which is a gummy, leather-like substance made from tea, vinegar, water, yeast and bacteria promoted as an alternative to traditional fabrics.
"You can grow this in your own home," she said, and it feels a bit like raw chicken when it first comes out of the container.
Pidsadowski said decided to test kombucha's durability against fabrics such as cotton, polyester and ox leather, as she couldn't find any information on that subject online.
By hanging weights from and dragging a spiked board across each sample, Pidsadowski determined that kombucha could support up to 170 pounds and resist up to 23 pounds of dragging force, making it second only to ox leather in strength.
Provided researchers can make it waterproof (e.g. by waxing it), Pidsadowski said kombucha could become a viable alternative to other fabrics, one that would let people produce their own fabric at home using less land and resources than traditional materials.
"People like to know what goes into their food. What if you would like to know what goes into your clothing too?"
Shirts made of kombucha could be composted or even eaten once you're tired of them, Pidsadowski noted.
"I don't know how good it would taste. It would be a very sweet, vinegar taste."
Pidsadowski's project also took gold in the junior category, netting her $150.
Allen won $150 for constructing a "Roberts-brand ballistapult" to research projectiles.
"I've actually combined three well-known siege weapons," he said, using plastic pipe, a weight and a lacrosse stick to create a catapult that had the counterweight of a trebuchet and the bow of a ballista, both of which pulled on the catapult's lever for added punch. (It's based on one of Leonardo da Vinci's designs.) The ballistapult also has flame decals, which Allen dryly stated would boost its range by at least 10 times and strike fear in the hearts of enemies.
The resulting weapon had a top range of about 10 metres and was accurate enough to strike the camera he set up to record his experiment, Allen said.
Allen said he tested many projectiles, including a shoe, to see which ones flew the furthest. He found that low-density, spherical objects such as a stress ball were the best. Such objects might not pack much of a punch, but he suggested that siege commanders could compensate by lighting them on fire.
"I'm not sure if the people at nationals would like flaming projectiles, but I'll look into that," he said.
Nasr said his study on varroa mites on bees was inspired by talks with his dad, Alberta Agriculture apiculturalist Medhat Nasr. Medhat mentioned that scientists knew that tracheal mites killed bees by interfering with their ability to keep their hives warm in winter, but weren't sure if the bee-blood-sucking varroa mites did the same.
To find out, Nasr tracked the internal temperatures of 12 Edmonton bee hives (six infested with varroa and six not) over 14 days last winter.
He found that the varroa hives bounced wildly between -2 and 33 C, with one dying off completely during the experiment. The un-infested hives stayed at an ideal 30-35 C regardless of the weather, suggesting excellent temperature control. This suggests that beekeepers should control varroa mites to reduce winter mortality.
These students will now work with local science fair judges to improve their projects for nationals, said Simpson science fair coach Marie Jahner. This is the first time since 2013 that Simpson has had students advance to the national fair.
"I'm excited for them to see the opportunity to meet kids from across Canada who all have a passion for science," she said.
The Canada-Wide Science Fair runs from May 15 to 20.
Money tree
Simpson student Ivan Grobbelaar was another big winner at the science fair, taking home $430 for his Fibonacci Tree Solar Collector.
Grobbelaar said he heard about the Fibonacci sequence (a numerical sequence where each number after the first two is the sum of the two previous ones) from his sister's science fair project last year. A budding engineer, he wanted to apply this sequence to solar panels.
"Nature has been using this for quite awhile," he said, noting that the sequence can be seen in waves, hurricanes and galaxies.
Traditional solar panels align their cells at a fixed angle, Grobbelaar said. He decided to build a solar array modelled on a tree using the Fibonacci sequence. Each branch was 137.5 degrees apart from its neighbour, as that's what you get when you divide a circle by 1.618, which is what you get when you divide any Fibonacci number by the one before it in the sequence. He also took inspiration from a book on plants and angled each branch at 90, 70, 50, 30 and 10 degrees from the stem.
Grobbelaar found that the solar tree produced about 3.5 times more power over three days than a traditional solar array of the same size – much more than he had expected. Due to how he had arranged the branches, no one cell shaded the other, and at least some were at an ideal angle with the sun at all times as it moved through the sky.
Grobbelaar said this solar tree was both artistic and practical, and could likely be built full-sized, reducing fossil fuel use and eventually making people money. You could even dress it up to look like a real tree.
"If you had a power plant full of them, it would look like a forest."
Science fairs are a great way to explore your interests and figure out what you want to do prior to university, Grobbelaar said.
"It's a chance to express yourself."
