Students show smarts at science fair

The hard work and bright minds of Green River students was on display last Thursday at Western Wyoming Community College.

Students from Lincoln Middle School, Monroe Intermediate School and 10 other schools from across southwest Wyoming were on hand to take part in the Southwest Regional Science Fair.

The competitors were divided into sixth to eighth-grade and ninth to 12th-grade divisions with several category divisions that included animal science, behavioral and social sciences, biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, chemistry, computer science;, earth and planetary science, engineering – electrical and mechanical; engineering – materials and bioengineering; energy and transportation, environmental management, environmental sciences, mathematical sciences, medicine and health sciences, microbiology, physics and astronomy and plant sciences.

Among the many Green River students taking part in the fair were Monroe Students Camden Nelson, Bethany Friberg, Jachob Fuss, Paxton Castillon and Emmalee Skinner.

For his project, Nelson wanted to find the best way to clean a toothbrush and used four different cleaning methods.

He said over the course of the project it was scary to see how dirty a toothbrush can get and he now knows the best cleaners to use. Friberg wanted to figure out what would be the sweetest out of cane sugar, stevia, and surcalose.

She said her hypothesis was that cane sugar would be the sweetest of the three, and tested their taste in both water and unsweetened lemonade.

Friberg found that the surcalose was the sweetest, said she learned a lot about math and variables and also the right sweetener she will now use in lemonade.

Fuss and Castillon had two components to their project, they wanted to find what kind of germs grow at their school and the best way to kill them.

The two used petri dishes to identify and grow the germs for 20 days and picked four cleaners to test.

They used Clorox wipes, Lysol spray, Windex and Formula 409 for the project.

Both stated they thought the clorox wipes would work the best, but were surprised to find that Formula 409 killed the most germs.

Skinner said the goal of her project was to see if crystal growth was dependent on the material it grows on. She used borax to grow crystals on fishing line, ribbon string, cotton string and pipe cleaners. Skinner said her hypothesis was that the cotton would grow the most crystals and the fishing line would grow the least.

At the conclusion of her project she was surprised that pipe cleaner grew more than the cotton, but she was right that the fishing line grew the least.