Hundreds of middle and high school students presented projects at the 70th Greater New Orleans Science and Engineering Fair last week at Tulane University.
Gone are the days of baking-soda volcanoes, said long-time judge Tommy Meehan.
“We’ve come a long way, where we’re very futuristic, forward-looking with a lot of these,” said Meehan, a chemical engineer.
While most students still display their research on tri-fold poster boards — a staple since at least the 90s — the fair otherwise continues to evolve, said its director, Michelle Sanchez.
Nearly half of the fair’s 16 categories are engineering-focused, Sanchez said, up from maybe two when she first got involved in 2013. Many students are coding and working with microcontrollers.
“Kids are learning these kinds of things much earlier now that they can do projects based on that,” Sanchez said, pointing to technology access and training for teachers.
One of this year’s multiple robotic hands was made by Jett Jones, a seventh grader at Lake Forest Charter in New Orleans East.
Jett used a flex sensor, a resistor and a microcontroller to control the hand’s jointed fingers — made from wire, foam and blue tape — bending them one at a time.
“I saw that in the world, there are many prosthetics that cost a lot of money, which in most places isn’t that available to many people,” he said, describing his inspiration for the project.
Jett said the solution came to him after watching a superhero movie.
“Ironman, he had like a glove like this,” he said.
Piano was the main inspiration for 12-year-old Desiree Chavez, who is also a student at Lake Forest.
For her project, she explored how music can elicit complex emotions by measuring listeners’ responses to major and minor versions of the same songs, like “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid, which she played and recorded.
“It’s my go-to place when I need time to relax and take a deep breath,” Desiree said. “I wondered why every time I needed to do that, I played in a minor key.”
Silas Ruby Wade, an eighth-grader at the International School of Louisiana, started looking into plastic-eating worms as a pollution solution last science fair.
First, he tested mealworms, but they didn’t eat that much, he said. This year, Silas tried Zophobas morio, known as superworms, instead.
“Although they originated from South America, they couldn’t really survive in the high humidity, so they perished by week three,” Silas said.
Since the superworms are not a great fit for Louisiana, Silas plans to keep looking for a better insect while researching the worms’ plastic-eating bacterium.
In all, more than 20 schools from Orleans and Jefferson were represented across this year’s middle and high school divisions.
The fair awards more than $60,000 in cash and prizes to students, teachers and schools. Some winners will advance to the state competition at LSU in April, where high school students will have a chance to qualify for the international final.