INUVIK - Besides visiting science centres, museums, shopping and the CN Tower, two Samuel Hearne Secondary School students spent the last week at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Toronto competing among 500 other students.

From left, Alannis Mckee of Aklavik, Annika Krizan of Inuvik and Rachel Watters of Inuvik represented the NWT at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Toronto. - photo courtesy of Rachel Watters

Rachel Watters, 14 and in Grade 9, and Annika Krizan, 14 and in Grade 8, travelled to Toronto from May 14 to 21 with their winning science fair projects to see the best from the rest of Canada. While the students didn't place at the fair, they're not complaining. It's hard to compete with the best in fair winner, who took home $16,500.

"The winners slowed the progression of cancer," Krizan said. "They mixed two cancer cells and that made the cancer slow down."

While Krizan and Watters weren't trying to save the world from cancer, they did complete experiments that would help improve their own world and help fellow students at their school. Krizan tested how exercise affects memory, while Watters studied how technology affects attention spans.

Watters read a story and told the students they had to answer questions afterwards. She found that 12- to 15-year-old boys were affected more than the older group of 16- to 18-year-old boys and more than any of the girl groups. Surprisingly for Watters, cellphones were more of a distraction than her hypothesis of television.

"Last year I tested how texting affects reaction times, so I kept going on with that," Watters said. "Some teachers might want to stop taking the kids into the computer room to do their work because they get distracted by the computer."

Krizan took 16 students and eight of them skipped rope before taking a memory test. All the students then had to look at a paper with 23 pictures and 23 words for 15 seconds and then write down the words or images they remember.

What she found was that with only 100 jumps of rope, the students had a 25 per cent better memory than the students who didn't skip. The idea came to her when she watched a story on the news about a school that placed treadmills in the school.

"The marks went up and attendance went up because students saw the grades go up and it was cool how it happened," Krizan said. "[Samuel Hearne Secondary School] is going to try and split up the gym classes so they are before math classes to try and get students to school and doing better."

Although she didn't place, the judges encouraged Krizan to continue with this experiment next year, and see what effect exercise and learning has on people of different ages and fitness levels.

As two of three representatives from the NWT, Krizan and Watters were a bit nervous about competing with Canadian students from larger centres. Once they arrived, however, they had nothing to fear.

"Even though we live here, there were some good projects but we could compete (against them)," Watters said. "We might not have all the resources, but we're just as good and we have the skills."

Alannis McKee from Aklavik also attended the Canada-Wide Science Fair.

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