Top students go national
Projects from across the Delta compete in regional science fair
Sarah Ladik
Northern News Services
Thursday, March 17, 2016
INUVIK
It's off to Montreal in May for three high school students from East Three Secondary.
Leesha Setzer is headed to the Canada Wide Science Fair in Montreal in May on the strength of her project on toxic tampons. - Sarah Ladik/NNSL photo
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Leesha Setzer, Kaylin Harder and Keely Voudrach wowed the judges and earned the trip to represent the Beaufort Delta at the Canada Wide Science Fair in Quebec with their hard work and skills.
"The big thing we want to celebrate is the work the kids did," said regional science fair organizer Lisa MacKenzie. "It's amazing, the effort, the time they put into it."
A total of 37 students from Aklvaik, Tuktoyaktuk, McPherson, and Inuvik competed - 23 at the elementary level and 14 in Grades 7 through 9. MacKenzie said they all came on top of their schools to move forward to the regional competition. Instead of awarding only the top three students, MacKenzie said they decided to recognize the top nine students in each age category, similar to how things are done at the national level.
"It's going well," said Reni Barlow, a consultant for Let's Talk Science, a group working to promote the sciences fields in the Delta. "It's good to see there is a science fair happening in the Delta."
The students involved certainly enjoyed it. Lena Bates and Brianna Gruben put together a project on climate change, but said they also liked seeing their peers' work.
"It's awesome," said Gruben. "It's our first year here, and I really like the project on brains."
One of the top projects, for which Leesha Setzer will be moving on to Montreal, dealt with toxic tampons, measuring how much bacteria leaked out over the course of a few days.
Setzer said she got the idea from another experiment that looked at tampons under a microscope to find some of their more surprising ingredients (including plexiglass), but also noted a recent report of a woman fighting blood poisoning as a result of toxic shock syndrome from leaving a tampon in for nine days.
"It's pretty relevant," she said.
Organizers did note that there were no participants from the higher grades, something they would like to see change in the coming years.
"The kids who are here want to do it," said MacKenzie, adding that participation in the fair is voluntary and doesn't count towards final grades. "It would be nice to see more of them at the senior level."
Barlow agreed, saying Let's Talk Science is actively encouraging more students to participate.
"Sometimes it seems like science fairs come out of the blue, but it's a whole process. Science is far more about asking good questions and being curious and less about memorizing facts," he said. "Science is a verb - it's something you do."
