{"id":2433,"date":"2021-03-26T09:53:27","date_gmt":"2021-03-26T13:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/?p=2433"},"modified":"2021-08-26T09:37:03","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T13:37:03","slug":"science-fair-at-pvhs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/26\/science-fair-at-pvhs\/","title":{"rendered":"Science fair at PVHS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Emma Jabbour<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  This year there were multiple students from Ponte Vedra High School that competed in the science fair. Many of these students were extremely successful in their findings and won impressive awards. It is safe to say that the students from PVHS worked hard on these projects and blew away the judges.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0PVHS\u00a0senior Alyssa Lassonde and her partners Skyler Demi and Teresa Aguiar, who are\u00a0also\u00a0seniors received Honorable Mention for the Environmental\/Plant Sciences category<\/strong>.\u00a0Their group hypothesized that\u00a0the Wisconsin Fast Plant could be used to\u00a0determine\u00a0the concentration of\u00a0copper in soil with a higher precision rate than the soil itself because the plants can take up copper efficiently.\u00a0They found that the soil with added copper had the highest\u00a0concentration. By day 19,\u00a0the average height of the plants without added copper chloride was higher than the ones with it.\u00a0The plants with no added cooper germinated at a faster rate than the plants grown in the soil with no added copper.\u00a0The group knew they wanted to do something with\u00a0plants,\u00a0and they decided to use the Wisconsin Fast Plant because it is a model organism in\u00a0research. One of the\u00a0surprises\u00a0that Alyssa and her\u00a0team faced was that the soil with added copper had a higher concentration than the plants grown in it, disproving their hypothesis. Alyssa said that her favorite thing about\u00a0competing in\u00a0the science fair was interacting with the judges and answering\u00a0their questions about her\u00a0groups\u00a0projects.\u00a0Alyssa said that \u201cparticipating in the science fair was\u00a0a great experience\u00a0and I highly recommend anyone that is interested in research to\u00a0participate\u00a0in it in the future.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Lauren\u00a0Kurlowicz\u00a0is a senior and her partners Jerson Milan and Kelvin Shi won honorable mention\u00a0for the environmental science section.\u00a0<\/strong>Her group was studying the possible presence\u00a0of genetic material to code for HSP70 in troops.\u00a0Lauren\u00a0said,\u00a0\u201cwe\u00a0found that some\u00a0genetic\u00a0material,\u00a0but more testing is\u00a0necessary\u00a0for further results.\u201d\u00a0They were inspired to do this project\u00a0by the growing concern for the stability of marine life due to climate change.\u00a0They faced\u00a0surprises\u00a0in the\u00a0later\u00a0half of the experiment when they had trouble visualizing\u00a0their data in gels.\u00a0Her favorite part of the process was doing their own experiments without it being a part of the\u00a0curriculum.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Senior Abby Kee and her partners Samantha Strong and Stephanie Hern\u00e1ndez\u00a0won the EPA award, NASA award, and placed 3rd<\/sup>\u00a0for the environmental category<\/strong>.\u00a0They were\u00a0trying\u00a0to lessen the effects of eutrophication\u00a0by delving into pond snails\u2019 abilities to digest\u00a0algae. Abby said\u00a0\u201cwe found that pond snails have pectinase and cellulase\u00a0present and\u00a0are therefore\u00a0able to digest algae due to the presence of\u00a0heredity\u00a0genes.\u00a0She said, \u201cI\u00a0conducted\u00a0a PCR test to check for these\u00a0heredity\u00a0genes, and used brown planaria\u00a0as a\u00a0control, for they do not\u00a0typically\u00a0digest algae.\u201d\u00a0The inspiration behind this project was the insidious effects of eutrophication, as the aquatic life\u00a0below perishes once the algae\u00a0die\u00a0and begins to decompose. One of the biggest\u00a0surprises\u00a0during\u00a0this project was that there was so little work done on pond snails and\u00a0fixing\u00a0these issues.\u00a0Due to genetic modification in nature being\u00a0relatively new, there is nothing on\u00a0altering snails to combat eutrophic\u00a0disasters. Abby said that \u201cit was nice to take the\u00a0time and think through a problem that I would like solved.\u201d She\u00a0felt that it\u00a0was great to talk to other\u00a0scientists\u00a0about her thoughts on this issue. It\u00a0was disheartening to not have a solution to\u00a0a man-made issue but\u00a0hopes that our\u00a0generation\u00a0will be able to solve it in the future.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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   Senior Andrew Kupcha and his partners David Vanlue and Aiden Fong are also seniors. The main idea of their project was to take various spices and herbs and grind them up, add water, run that through a large filter, and then add them to a bacterial plate to see if they affected the growth. They found that only three herbs and spices had any significant affect and those were Peppermint, Turmeric, and Cinnamon. They identified this by comparing the rates of growth to a modern antibiotic called Ampicillin. They were inspired to do this by the current pandemic, plague doctors from the 1300\u2019s, and the shortage of novel antibiotics. He said, \u201cwe knew plague doctors’ ideas of what prevented disease were incorrect, but we wanted to see if any of the fragrant they put in their mask actually did help.\u201d As for surprises, the ampicillin they used was old which caused it to stop working and made it hard to identify how effective it was. But besides that, and Turmeric, all results were predicted. Andrew says his favorite thing about competing in science fair was \u201cgetting to work with and compete with all my friends that I\u2019ve been in biotech with all the last four years.\u201d David said, \u201cmy favorite thing about competing in the science fair was being able to apply all the techniques we have learned into one project.\u201d Their group got first in their category of Biomedical\/Cellular\/Microbiology and won the St. Johns County Medical Alliance award. This means that their team is going to states.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

   These projects obviously had a lot of work put into them and the participants have accomplished so much already. The science fair is an excellent opportunity for students interested in research to highlight their knowledge about something they are passionate about. The science fair has opened a door for students to dive into research and find solutions to problems our world may be facing.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Emma Jabbour   This year there were multiple students from Ponte Vedra High School that competed in the science fair. Many of these students were extremely successful in their findings and won impressive awards. It is safe to say that the students from PVHS worked hard on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/science-fair-2-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2439,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions\/2439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}