Last month, 153 Solon eighth graders donned their professional attire and filled the Solon Middle School gym eager to share what they had learned from their science fair experiments, with judges and guests.
The annual Middle School Science Fair included almost fifty percent of the students in Solon’s eighth grade class. The extracurricular activity has become a sort of right of passage for the middle schoolers who often go on to take advanced science classes in high school and beyond.
Michael Tsironis, a Solon eighth grade science teacher, has worked with the science fair for the past few years, but this year was the first in which he coordinated it as the department chair.
Along with the 153 students, he also organized the 75 science fair judges, many hailing from Swagelok and Avantor here in Solon, and others from the Cleveland Clinic organization and Case Western Reserve University, as well as members of the Solon and surrounding area’s business community.
He said what he loves about the middle school science fair is the diversity of its projects.
“We have some students working in labs, with medical equipment and high tech items, and then we have others that use things from their own homes, things they find in their kitchens,” he said. “We meet with the students so they can share what they want to study and I am always blown away by the many kinds of subjects they choose.”
One student, who chose a subject she knew well, was Harper McMeehan. The soccer player said she decided to try and prove something she had been told by many of her soccer coaches.
“They would tell us not to use a deflated ball for practice and games so I did an experiment which studied whether the deflated or inflated soccer ball went farther,” she said.
She used a ball launcher machine and tested soccer balls with six different levels of inflation.
“That my coaches were right,” she said with a laugh. “The well-inflated balls went ten yards farther than the deflated balls.”
Another student Sylvia Stella, said she was interested in the correctness of AI detection systems, so she chose that for her project. She said although she does not use AI for middle school, she knows it is a hot topic in high schools and colleges.
“I wanted to know how accurate the systems to detect if AI has been used for a project or paper were,” said Sylvia.
She said after various entries into GPT Zero, she found that as of today, “the AI detection systems are not completely accurate.”
She said this had real world implications if someone was accused of using AI by one of the systems, and that it turned out to be actually a false reading.
But perhaps Andrew Langer showed how something you use every day can be turned into an interesting science fair experiment.
“I like mints,” said Andrew. “So I studied whether the breath mints that say they cool your mouth actually do,” he said with a smile.
He put the mints, of differing flavors, like peppermint, spearmint etc., into cups of water. Then he tested the temperature of the water after a specified time period.
“I discovered that the water temperature was cooled less than one degree by the mints. So my conclusion is that breath mints don’t actually cool your mouth,” he explained.
He said that even with this finding, he was still going to enjoy his “cool” mints.
For many of the eighth graders, part of the excitement of the science fair is being able to compete against fellow students for recognition. Mr. Tsironis said that the top three science fair projects in each category go onto the district competition. Students were recognized in December in the Solon Middle School lecture hall for outstanding projects in biology, chemistry, earth and environmental science, engineering, health and behavioral science, and physics, explained Tamara Strom, the district’s communication director.
Fifteen students have been invited to present their projects in March at the Northeastern Ohio Science & Engineering Fair, alongside more than 300 students from Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage and Summit counties.
The 2025 Solon Middle School Science Fair winners include:
Michael Zhang – Earth / Environmental
Earth/Environmental Science
Health and Behavioral Science
2. Deepshika Thirumalaikumar
The Top 15 Overall Scorers now advance to the Regional Science Fair: Michael Zhang, Sophia Huang, Mia Mao, Anaya Jolly, Mahayra Rai, Srishti Salian, Olivia Shin, Quinn Bryant, Svanik Hansh Kolli, Isabella Capizzani, Nathan Mulholland, Amaya McFadden, Braden Pannell, Nora Haas and Cora Chen.