Students use creative minds at STEAM Fair
Cillian Crow smiled from cheek to cheek as he welcomed with pride each opportunity to demonstrate and explain his experiment at the district’s 12th annual STEAM Fair in the Eugene Brooks Intermediate School gymnasium on March 21.
The second grader won the innovation award for his project, Power in the Air: Free Energy Everywhere! His project explored Nikola Tesla's pioneering wireless electricity in the 1890s. Crow held a lit light bulb, powered by wireless electricity.
“I love being able to talk with people and show them what I do in my me time,” said Crow. “I had a lot of fun making all of this. I learned electricity can do anything no matter how big or small it is.”
The STEAM Fair, sponsored by the Webutuck Teachers Association, featured over 70 student participants, over 30 staff volunteers and seven student listeners. The student listeners and staff volunteers visited with students to learn more about their entries before coming together to select award winners.
“It is a big day for science,” said Danielle Fridstrom, STEAM Fair co-chair with fellow science teacher Christine Gillette. “It is the day where it’s not us showing students what we think is important for science, but for them to talk to us and explain to us what they’ve learned, what they’ve figured out and what excites them.
“I love when we get projects driven by student interest, and even the judges don’t know the answer until the student tells us.”
Fourth grader Cooper Reyes likes chewing gum and decided to use different kinds of gum in his project with his younger brother, Brody.
“We wanted to see what flavor lasts the longest, how gum keeps its flavor for so long,” said Cooper after finding out watermelon-flavored Extra gum kept its flavor the longest.
Sabin Kain took second place among high school entries for exploring whether Gatorade can be substituted for water when watering plants. The freshman used water, Gatorade and a mixture of the two in his study.
“I watched the movie ‘Idiocracy’ and in that movie they used sports drinks to water their plants,” he said. “I wanted to see if it would be bad for plants to water them with sports drinks. I learned it would be bad. Water is the main ingredient of Gatorade, but there could be other things like salt or sugar that could stop the growth.”
Quinn Merritt expressed the importance of washing your hands and learned from his tests that more germs were killed by using a hand sanitizer with 70% alcohol. The second grader is already planning his 2027 STEAM Fair entry, which will involve rock candy.
“I’m able to eat the rock candy anytime I want,” he said.
Hannah Martyniak was looking at fruits and vegetables to see if they could be used to make batteries, learning lemons created a low voltage with fresher and additional lemons producing a higher voltage. Her visual presentation won the visual communications award.
“I learned that the more fresh lemons, the more volts there can be, because I noticed when I didn’t have fresh lemons, it didn’t really have any volts in it,” she said.
Martyniak added, “I definitely would do another project next year. I really had fun making this project and it’s fun teaching people more things about different projects that I’m doing.”
Special Awards Grades K-4
DaVinci Award: Walter Duncan, kindergarten, Hydraulic Arm
Macgyver Award: Logan Kiszka, first grade, Hydraulic Crane
Innovation Award: Cillian Crow, second grade, Power in the Air: Free Energy Everywhere!
Visual Communications Award: Hannah Martyniak (third grade), Lemon Battery
Mark Watney Award: Joseph Murtagh-Robert, kindergarten, Solar System
Attenborough Awards: Henry Eschbach, fourth grade, Fish Habitat; Vivian Duncan, second grade, Desert Display
Bill Nye Awards: Natalie Ahearn, Emily Lugo Gonzalez, Katherine Sota Sola, Athena Torres Jewell, fourth graders, Reactions: Elephant Toothpaste
Six-Seven Award: Rylee Martyniak, second grade, Soda & Mentos
People’s Choice Award: Lilliana Nelson, fifth grade, Mixing Magic
EBIS 5-8 Grade Winners
First place: Lilliana Nelson, fifth grade, Mixing Magic
Second place: Elaina Howard, fifth grade, Shaking Things Up
Third place: Cassidy Brennan, sixth grade, Is Your Dog Left Pawed or Right Pawed?
Honorable mentions: Fiona Crow, eighth grade, Mood Music; June Duncan, sixth grade, Hydraulic Can Crusher; Lois Musgrove and Iris Moore, fifth graders, The Fungus Among Us
WHS 9-12 Grade Winners
First place: Nolan Howard, freshman, The Science of Flight Simulators
Second place: Sabin Kain, ninth grade, Can Gatorade Substitute for Water When Watering Plants?