Bright minds compete in Malta Elementary School Science Fair

A quick stroll through the Malta Elementary Auditorium last week quickly showed that the school’s students like to wear their thinking caps and the said caps hold some powerful minds.

The school’s annual Science Fair concluded last Wednesday with an awards ceremony – the day before that nearly a dozen volunteer judges were treated to the nearly 50 exhibits -- and the house was packed. Rachel Mortenson, who has organized the Science Fair for the last 10 years, was pleased with how everything turned out.

“It’s a lot of work and a lot of stress for the students,” she said. “But we have a lot of nice exhibits this year.”

Each of the Science Fair participants and medal winners are pictured and listed on page 6A this week, but a few students granted the Phillips County News interviews following the award ceremony. Lane Thompson, Jared Eggebrecht and Kennedy Koss – all fifth grade students at Malta Elementary – received medals

The purpose of Koss’ exhibit, entitled Motor-vation, was to see how many neodymium magnets it would take to make a copper wire move. Koss said she made a motor with a battery and set the copper models atop the rig to see how well it would spin.

“It worked pretty well,” Koss said. “Some of them better than others. The one with the cross on it was harder to make symmetrical and didn’t spin as well.”

Koss said that her father, Kevin, helped her with her project and the best part of the process was “seeing it spin really fast.”

Thompson said the purpose of his science fair entry – entitled Gotta Burp – was to find out if different beverages create a different amount of gas when a person drinks them and explain why some beverages make a person burp more than others. He added that the idea came to him after a few gassy experiences at his family’s dinner table.

“I don’t like it when I am sitting in the middle of supper and burp and then I get in trouble,” he said. “So then I decided I wanted to try and figure out what causes you to do that.”

The conclusion of Gotta Burp was in some cases, acidic beverages created more gas, but it isn’t always the case.

Eggebrecht’s entry, entitled Color Confusion, focused on the Stroop Effect which demonstrates how the brain’s reaction time slows down when it deals with conflicting information. He tested his theory by randomly selecting 20 people to take two tests on the internet in which participants had to choose between a bevy of words, color-coded, in a timely fashion.

“I picked this because it looked fun and I am happy with the results,” Eggebrecht said.

Each of the students who earned a medal at the Malta Elementary Science Fair now have the opportunity to enter their exhibits in the Region Fair to be held in Havre.