The best of the best in both Innisfail and Olds are heading to the students' Canada-Wide Science Festival.
Two Innisfail High School (IHS) students will be joining four others from Olds High School (OHS) at the annual festival in Regina from May 14 to 20.
Kirk Rieberger and Benjamin Jud, both Grade 10 students at IHS who went to the nationals last year in Montreal, are going with OHS Grade 11 students Correne Minty and Nicole Green, and Grade 10 students Rochelle Reeve and Jazzlyn Thompson.
The six Chinook's Edge School Division students earned the honour after their medal-winning showing at the Central Alberta Regional Science Fair that was held in Red Deer on March 10 and 11.
Rieberger and Jud earned a silver medal for their project called Hitting the Sack: Analyzing your Sleep Pattern. Reeve and Thompson also earned silver for their Why Can't "Eye" See? entry. Minty won a gold medal for her Hydrogen Sulphide Sensing project, while Green also took top honours for her entry called The Influence of Culture Shock on International Immigrants.
The regional fair also produced medal winners from Bowden Grandview School. Justin Corbett and Erin Smith both won Special Awards in the grade 5 and 6 competition, while Presley Smith and Paige Reberger won the Rosalyn Cowan Memorial Award.
Erin Smith, a Grade 8 student, won a bronze medal for a Fruit DNA entry while Grade 7 student Justin Corbett also took bronze for his entry The Importance of Storing Feed.
The national science festival, which will be played out at the University of Regina, is being billed as a "fun exhibition" of science, technology, engineering and math from the best 500 young scientists in the nation.
Ruth Roedler, a retired Chinook's Edge elementary school teacher and president of the Central Alberta Regional Science Fair, said the regionals this month that produced the region's Top 6 featured highly creative entries.
"We thought the quality of the ones this year was higher than the past, which pleased us very much. The kids had done an awful lot of work on them and I hope that reflects in their projects when they go (to Regina)," said Roedler. "Kirk and Ben worked on last year's project and just added to it for this year, which is fully acceptable.
"Nicole usually does a project in the psychology range and that was a totally different one but she kept on the psychology. Correne was developing a sort of sensor to check H2S (hydrogen sulphide)," she added. "They were all topics we hadn't had before, so that was kind of neat."
She said while these projects from the Central Alberta science fair will be entered at the nationals, students will be able to make corrections or additions.
"The judges will be giving pointers. If a judge says you need to have better graphs they are perfectly eligible to change their graphs, which we hope they do but that is entirely up to them," said Roedler.
And while science projects will be front and centre in Regina, students will also be engaged in many other activities, including a tour day that offers a choice of 15 different locales. There will also be a tour of the university campus that will include science areas, and an elaborate awards ceremony that will be followed by a banquet and dance.
For sponsorship opportunities at this year's Canada-Wide Science Festival, contact [email protected]
Ruth Roedler, president of the Central Alberta Regional Science Fair
"We thought the quality of the ones this year was higher than the past, which pleased us very much. The kids had done an awful lot of work on them and I hope that reflects in their projects when they go (to Regina)."
