Kirsten Larsen
Northern News Services

NNSL (Mar 05/99) - Two budding scientists have concluded that the gravel used on Yellowknife roads in winter, which has been blamed for flat tires, is, unfortunately, the best option around -- so far.

Two Grade 8 students from William McDonald school won gold in the city-wide Regional Science Fair held at St. Patrick high school March 1, for their project focusing on Yellowknife roads.

The winning project used a scientific approach to investigating an issue which has caught the attention of many Yellowknife drivers.

"We saw in the paper that people were complaining about flat tires, so we thought this is an applicable project," said Kyle Rentmeister, co-partner for the project. "The paper asked if there was a better substance to use on roads instead of gravel and we wanted to find out what other substance we could use."

Elliott Nguyen said he and Rentmeister tested the different options the city has for road-traction coverage, which brought up the argument of which was better -- salt or the rubber-threatening gravel.

"We tested sand, gravel, salt and calcium chloride," said Nguyen.

Rentmeister explained that salt and calcium chloride were tested to see which is more effective in break down the ice and snow.

"Those are de-icers, the salt and calcium chloride," explained Rentmeister. "We tested de-icers to see which was the best."

Nguyen said the tests concluded the city had chosen the most practical option for the roads.

"The best de-icer was calcium chloride and the best traction material was gravel," said Nguyen. "Of the two -- calcium chloride and gravel -- gravel is still better because calcium chloride is too expensive to be purchased in mass quantities. It melts ice but up here the snow is too thick. It wouldn't melt all the way down to the pavement."

The students discovered that although the use of calcium chloride alone would not provide sufficient traction or erode the ice, there may be other chemicals that could do the job.

"We found out about other de-icers," said Rentmeister. "Urea, which is sort of like a fertilizer and CMA 2 -- it's calcium magnesium acetate and potassium chloride."

Nguyen said the chemicals are not readily available in the North but worth investigating.

"Our teacher said they are used in airports down south for de-icing the road and up here they only use sand for the runways, they don't use any de-icer," said Nguyen. "CMA is relatively new, it's just out of the laboratories so it's relatively expensive. It's going through some trial runs."

The students did not have the chemicals on hand to be able to test them, but are planning on ordering some and adding the test conclusions to their project for the Canadian-wide science fair in Edmonton May 15-22. As the city-wide gold winners, they have been chosen to attend the science fair along with the second-place winner, Brenda Matthew, a Grade 8 student from Mildred Hall.

Matthew received silver for his project focusing on chemicals used in glow-in-the-dark products. The purpose of the project was to attempt to create a glow-in-the-dark hockey puck that would be able to rejuvenate its glowing capability by putting it near a light source before using it in the dark.