FMS Fair’s top 2
Emma, Ridhima finish 1-2 during inaugural science fair
Farragut Middle School sixth-grader Emma Tarditi has won inaugural FMS Science Fair.
The school held the science fair at FMS Friday, Dec. 16. Emma won the grand prize, $25, for her entry, “Electroculture: Does Electricity Affect Plant Growth?”
Sixth-grader Ridhima Singh won second place and $15 for her entry “Gender and Math Performance.”
Emma, daughter of Alfonso Tarditi and Lovely Krishen, said she got the idea for her entry from hearing about where grass grew after a lightning strike.
Her hypothesis was “If plants are exposed to electric currents, their rates of growth will be significantly affected.” Emma conducted her experiments using a paddle electrode, a sleeve electrode and a stick electrode.
Emma said she found the paddle electrode caused the plants to grow taller but they lost leaves and tipped over and the sleeve electrode weakened the stems but the stick electrode showed more healthy growth in the plants.
FMS science teacher Mary Sue Pruitt said students who entered the fair are eligible to participate in 2017 Southern Appalachian Science and Engineering Fair March 27-30 at Thompson Boling Arena on The University of Tennessee, Knoxville campus.
Regional winners advance to the national science fair in St. Paul, Minn., in October 2017.
“[The students] used various Internet resources for ideas on how to do their displays,” Pruitt said. “We introduced [the fair] to students in September, so if some students wanted to do long-term research, they could.”
Ridhima, daughter of Debjani and Nagendra Singh, said the idea for her entry came about following an argument with her brother over whether boys or girls were smarter in math. She said the research showed there was no significant difference in math abilities according to gender.
There were 17 categories from which students could have a project in the science fair.
Categories included engineering, electrical and chemical; environmental sciences; microbiology, and plant sciences.
“It’s interesting to see kids doing engineering and robotics in addition to typical science fair entries,” Pruitt said.
One such entry belonged to seventh-grader Cade Austin, whose entry was “High Potential: Does Mass or Height Affect the Potential Energy.” He used a ball on a ramp to prove his theory.
Calvin Schaerer, seventh-grader, built a LEGO Mindstorms Ev 3 robot to see if it could solve a Rubik’s Cube with his entry, “Ready Set Cube.”
It did.
Ninth-graders Lanah Kudich and Thy Ho teamed up to find a healthier substitute for butter in their entry, Calories in Counting.
Four teachers coordinated the event at FMS: Laura Mann, Christy Tucker, Janet Pfieffer and Pruitt. They stayed after school and helped students narrow down their ideas into a testable hypothesis.
The science fair was part of the school’s push this year to include science and math enrichment in the school, she said. The school also added the MathCounts competition as part of the enrichment.
Judges, such as Dr. Joanne Logan, associate professor at Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science at UT, not only judged entries but also helped students shape up their projects and encouraged them to think about what they could do to improve upon their experiments, Pruitt said.
Judges looked at scientific accuracy and procedures, creativity and originality of their ideas, scientific concepts they learned and students were interviewed on why they chose their projects.
