INUVIK - Take it from Monica Loreen, cellphones and driving don't mix.

The 14-year-old didn't get an accident while texting and driving, but she did perform an experiment that provides a pretty good argument against it.

Samuel Hearne Secondary School students Monica Loreen, demonstrating the props she used in her science fair project to show the dangers of cellphone use while driving, and Julia Dzurka pose in the school's library a few hours before leaving for Peterborough, Ont., to compete in the Canada Wide Science Fair. - Andrew Rankin/NNSL photo

So good, in fact, she won a free trip to the Canada Wide Science Fair in Peterborough that started May 15 and will run until May 23.

She earned it after two top placings at both Samuel Hearne Secondary School's science fair and the regional fair, which were both held in March. She's among three students who qualified and left Friday for the national event that will draw about 500 finalists from around the country.

To demonstrate the danger of cellphone use while driving, she conducted an experiment with a group of mothers of the same age who usually drive and chat.

Loreen's experiment tools included a 30-cm ruler and a cellphone.

While her subjects used one hand to answer a cellphone call or text message their other hand tried to catch a ruler being dropped directly over it.

While most were able to handle answering a phone call and catching without too much trouble, text messages proved much more of a challenge.

"Nearly everyone dropped the ruler," she said.

By measuring where participants caught the ruler, Loreen was able to judge their reaction time. She performed the experiment five times on each subject to figure out their average reaction time.

She said her experiment proved cellphones distract for at least that split second needed, and often much longer, to cause a traffic accident.

Loreen said her experiment, which took her 19 hours to complete, convinced her that cellphone use should be banned with all city driving.

"People use their cellphones too much and they don't realize how dangerous that can be."

But she stopped short of calling for a ban on Inuvik roads.

"My mom does it all the time here because she's so busy," she said. "But she's a good driver and has never gotten close to getting in an accident."

Loreen's schoolmate Julia Dzurka, 12, travelled with the group to compete in the national fair. Her project attempted to determine whether pessimists are better at spotting a phony smile than an optimist. She ended up proving her hypothesis wrong.

"I always thought a pessimistic person had better instincts and could tell the difference better by going with their gut feeling, and maybe an optimistic person might be a little more naive and want to think every smile is a real one," said Dzurka.

She found 20 random subjects, half of whom were self-labelled optimists, and the other half pessimists.

Her subjects sat through 20 videos of people smiling and then had to guess which were real and which weren't.

To her surprise the optimists fared much better. In fact one optimist guessed nearly perfect with an 18 out of 20 score.

Dzurka always knew about the power of a smile to charm. But she also learned plenty more on the subject through her experiment, including all the muscles that work together, such as the zygomatic major muscle, to make a smile. A real smile, she found out, only lasts for five seconds while fake smiles lasts much longer.

Both Loreen and Dzurka said they're excited about competing with other students their age on a national stage. The pair will also be joined at the fair by SHSS student Rachel Watters, 14.

"I'm sure we'll have lots of fun and learn a lot," said Loreen.