Two students from River Valley School (RVS) attended the 51st annual Canada-wide Science Fair for the first time in history and brought home medals for their efforts.
Grade 7 students, Victoria Taylor and Nicole Green, packed their bags and went to Lethbridge for a week last month to participate in the fair and returned home with medals and scholarships.
After presenting their individual projects at the RVS science fair in February, they moved on to the Mountain View County Science Fair in March and again moved on to the regional fair in Red Deer later that month.
From there, they qualified for the nationals and only six contestants were chosen out of 500 across Central Alberta.
“I was testing to see if sugar affects activity in the classroom. So what I did was I gave my test subjects a baseline trial, which was no candy at all, a sugar trial, which was sugar candy and a placebo trial, which was sugar-free candy,” explained 12-year-old Taylor.
The subjects were not aware that the placebo trial involved sugar-free candy, she said.
“By using the placebo I could test to see if sugar really does affect their activity without their bias,” she said.
“When I was observing their behaviour I found that there was no difference in activity levels between the sugar trial and the sugar-free trial,” she explained.
“So that means that the sugar was not affecting their activity but it was what the children thought they should do that was affecting their activity.”
She won a bronze medal, $100 and a $1,000 scholarship to Western University in London, Ont. Her goal is to make it to nationals again next year, she said.
“It was a life-changing experience and I am going to work really hard to go back next year because it was a lot of fun,” she said.
Thirteen-year-old Green presented a different project, winning her a silver medal, $300 and a $2,000 scholarship to Western University in London, Ont.
“I tested the influence of music, reading and video games on your cognitive thinking so basically I had test subjects from grades 5 to 8 and adults at the Telus Spark Science Centre (in Calgary),” explained Green.
“They would either listen to music, play a video game or read for 10 minutes and then I had a test they would take after,” she said.
“I found an average for music, reading and video games of about 74 per cent and all the music students who listened to music before their test, no matter how old, got above average when they scored. So music was the best stimulation,” she said.
She also wants to make it to nationals again next year.
“It was definitely the most fun I've had in a long time.”
