Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Inuvik (May 31/02) - Two Inuvik students showed the rest of Canada some of the best brains in the country are right here in Inuvik.

Samuel Hearne Grade 11 students Amanda Johns and Kirsten DeBastien were invited to the Canada-Wide Science Fair, held this year in Saskatoon, Sask.

Their project defined what variables would affect a fire in the Boreal forest and they won third prize.

They produced a 13-minute video and set up a simulation of a forest fire using match sticks and bits of paper fixed in a tinfoil lasagna pan.

"The match sticks represent spruce trees very well, because the tops of the trees get very dry during the summer," Johns said.

Paper represented the duff or mulch and small bushes on the forest floor.

The girls said the judges were impressed with what they had learned and how they were able to articulate the thesis to the audience.

"They said it was innovative," Johns said. "The liked the video and they thought we had a good overall knowledge of the project.

"They said we had too much knowledge of it," DeBastien added.

They started the project last winter and didn't finish until it was time to leave.

"We started in February and only finished a week before we had to go," DeBastien said. "The day before we left we still needed to print off the display."

The video took 13 hours to complete.

The idea came from a fire camp Johns attended at Sunny Lake that was sponsored by Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development

"If I hadn't gone on that camp, I wouldn't have come up with this idea," Johns said. "It was near an old burn site, so I learned a lot about the boreal forest and the impact that fires have on forests."

The students also got some help from RWED and the Aurora Research Institute on research and in producing the project.

"They were all really cool," Johns said. "You wouldn't see a volcano at the national science fair."

For their efforts the girls each won a $1,000 scholarship and a $200 cash prize.

This was the first fair the girls had competed in since Grade 3, where Johns got a bronze for a project on marsupials and Debastien got silver for her efforts on science.

Other SHSS students who attended the fair were Graham Reid, who did a project on baby bottle tooth decay, Melanie Oullet and Kate Snow, who did a project on determining gender by examining feet.

Shelley Hoguveen, project co-ordinator for the fair, said about 450 students from all over Canada attended this year's competition.

She said two Toronto students came up with the overall winning entry with their project on boundary layer acceleration, which detailed how aircraft and automobiles can reduce wind drag by up to 30 per cent.