Some schools have them, some schools don’t. But there are some science fairs that you can apply to even if you don’t go to that school or plan to go there.
The Regional Science Fair is one of them. It has been held at UOIT for the last 14 years.
The science fair is open to all students in Grade 4 to Grade 12, and even students that are home-schooled are allowed to compete.
The fair consists of four age groups, including Elementary Grade 4-6, Junior Grade 7-8, Intermediate Grade 9-10 and Senior Grade 11-12. This year’s fair had 68 projects and 70 students from more than two dozen schools from Durham Region.
The event also had more than 250 visitors from family to teachers and the general public.
Baasil Khan from Valley Farm P.S. in Pickering, brought a project that was on the master controller. It makes a remote able to control for everything that has a power source in your room or house.
His project won an honorable mention at the fair. He said this fair was the first he competed at and he wanted to try it out because it looked fun.
His mother told him about the fair. His project was made for elderly people so that they wouldn’t have to get up and be in pain when turning a light on or off, or turning off something that didn’t have a remote.
“I want to do something more advanced next year,” he said.
Vincent Allert’s project showed how salt can help preserve food and how long food would be preserved for judging by the amount of salt put into beets.
Allert had a partner help him with the project. “For the science fair, we wanted to do something that would change the world and the human race,” he said.
The jar of beets that lasted the longest lasted four weeks and it had an amount of 50 percent of salt in the jar preserving the beets.
“I want the competitors to learn and have fun at the fair, the prizes are bonuses,” said Mary Olaveson, the co-ordinator of the event.
Olaveson says there are no restrictions to type of science projects for any level but there are restrictions on what students can do for the projects, like no testing on people without their consent.
“If you are doing biology, you can’t use diseases or manipulating cells and no testing on animals for safety reasons,” she said.
Olaveson also said some of the students are keen about science and want to learn more about other types of sciences. “It can get competitive at some points in the fair. But it is still all about learning an having fun,” she said.
There was also a special award given out this year. The Lake Simcoe Conservation Authority (LSRCA) Award was given to Eric Taipale from Chris Hadfield P.S. in Brooklin.
The grand prize winners were Shiv Patel and Jordan MacKellar who will now advance to the national Canada-Wide Science Fair that is being held in Ottawa from May 12 to the 18. The week-long CWSF features 500 top young scientists from all across Canada.
This year, there were 11 award winners and five students that were given honorable mentions.
Elementary:
- First – Calum Forrester from Norman G. Powers P.S. in Oshawa.
- Second – Alisha Faridi from Roland Michener P.S. in Ajax
- Third – Mansha Manivannan and Subega Sivenenthira from Altona Forest P.S. in Pickering.
Junior:
- First – Ayanna Jeyakanthan from Roland Michener P.S. in Ajax.
- Second – Shiv Patel from Alaxander Graham Bell P.S. in Ajax.
- Third – Jordan MacKellar from Trafalgar Castle School in Whitby.
Intermediate:
- First – Dhrumil Patel from Pickering High School in Pickering.
- Second – Ammar Faridi from J. Clarke Richardson Collegiate in Ajax.
Senior:
- First – Noor Al-Shabboot from Wali ul Asr East Campus in Scarborough
- Second – Rida Ghani from Northview Heights Secondary School in North York
