High school students gathered in the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School cafeteria on Saturday for the annual science fair presenting experiments that explored a range of subjects from environmental sustainability to modern engineering.
Testing molecular gastronomy using miso soup, building a device that could help the blind read on computer screens, and creating a vintage Pink Floyd-inspired speaker were among the inspirations on display at the high school.
Anna Cotton, an earth and environmental science teacher and the events organizer – alongside fellow teacher Natalie Munn – said the fair is an important event for her students.
“It’s a competition but they also get to sit and talk with people around the community and in their fields,” Cotton said. “It’s also nice to have someone who is not a teacher looking at your work.”.
Among students on Saturday eager to discuss their work was tenth grader Emmett Taylor. In front of a booth with cars crafted out of wood and metal, Taylor was testing the aerodynamics of cars if you added dimples to the exterior. He was inspired by the way dimples reduce drag on golf balls.
Taylor tested his theory by comparing the speed of a wooden model car with dimples and one without dimples. He discovered that the car with dimples traveled 23 feet in 1.49 seconds while the one without traveled the same distance in 1.52 seconds.
“It worked out. I didn’t know if it would but it did,” said Taylor.
Also on Saturday, Judah Levy experimented with molecular gastronomy. He wanted to see if miso soup could be turned into a gel sphere. Using calcium lactate and sodium alginate, the result was a convenient bite sized sphere that bursts with flavor upon taking a bite.
“Molecurlar Dystronomy is a process used to encapsulate all sorts of things [like boba tea balls]. In my case miso soup,” said Levy. “The biggest challenge was trying to perfect the thickness of the outside layer because you don’t want it too thick but you also don’t want to be able to pop it too easily, which was hard to balance.”
Senior Gabriel Walters explored vintage speaker systems, crafting his very own Leslie speaker. Influenced by a popular sound style used by 1960s rock bands, his creation was able to alter the sound projected using the Doppler effect.
“Leslie speakers were popular in the 60s, used by bands like Pink Floyd and the Beatles,” said Walters. “My goal was to create a cheaper version.”
Other students tackled more practical gadgets. Senique Wilson developed a device fashioned from a beach net, a ruler, and some coding skills, that would protect juvenile clams from predators such as crabs and fish, aiming to improve the output of shellfish farming efficiency. Gabriel Arado engineered a refreshable braille display which allows blind individuals to feel text from a computer or television screen. John Mafero analyzed whether teachers could differentiate between AI-generated and real images, finding that overall teachers hovered around 40 to 60 percent accuracy.
Many juniors and seniors presented self-made wind turbines, building and testing a prototype in an attempt to maximize its energy efficiency. They used a wind tunnel to measure how much energy their designs could generate, with most producing between one and three kilowatt-hours.
Cotton, science fair organizer, said that the competitive nature of the fair is good for academically focused students.
“This is a way for these kids to push themselves in academics in the same way we do in sports,” she said.. “It’s a unique experience we don’t see as often.”
