INDEPENDENCE, Ohio — Remember school science fairs? For a lot of us, when a teacher said 'science fair,' our reaction was, 'Oh no! What am I going to do?,' or, 'This is going to be way too much work.'"
In the end, however, you learned something, and as we found out, science fairs still have a place in schools today.
Meet Paige Hojdar, Leah Ziss, and Ava Ward. These girls are just three of the eighth graders at St. Michael School in Independence who were recently judged on their science fair projects.
"I am fructose intolerant, which means certain sugars make me feel very sick. So I was very interested in what would the worst sugars be for your body, Paige told us. "I poured a cup of water and then put four grams of sugar and then dumped in four grams of yeast and then put a balloon on top of the mouth of the water bottle to capture the carbon dioxide that was created from the chemical reaction."
"My parents always talk about how fast food is bad for you," Leah said of her project. In this experiment, I got three burgers from Burger King, Wendy's, and McDonald's and put them in plastic containers, then I also made a home-cooked burger...and I let all the burgers sit for two weeks. During those two weeks I made observations on what kind of mold happens."
"I measured the bones," Ava, who studied the effects of soda on bones, explained. "They're chicken bones...and I examined the color and how big they were, and I placed them in the pop for several days. Then I took them out, weighed them, and compared them to find out my results."
Easy peasy, right? That was a goal here: Find a basic project and make it your own, and do it all on your own. No going online to find a project someone else did.
While those may be more flashy, they don't challenge kids to think creatively. And in the end, it's only about your results.
"Organic brown coconut sugar was the worst," Paige said.
"The home-cooked burger molded the first because there [weren't] any added salts, saturated fats, or preservatives," Leah said. "Wendy's was second, it started molding on day six. McDonald's was day 10, and Burger King it didn't show mold at all."
"Regular Coca Cola took the most weight off a bone and caused the most bone thinning," Ava said.