How the moon affects peoples’ health, cloning and the effect of pea flour on bugs in stored grain are three of the experiments heading to the national science fair in Calgary in May.
Those projects were among the winners in the Leader, Sask., regional science fair, said Gerry Smith, a teacher at the Leader Composite School.
Science fairs have been held in Saskatchewan for 15 years. The Leader fair has grown to 230 students in grades 3-12 this year from 20 students in 1990.
Smith said the goal is to get students to examine an idea using scientific methods.
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“It’s the way they approach the problem.”
While some teachers make science fair projects compulsory, others say it’s optional. Also varying are the amount of time and effort students apply to their ideas.
Saskatchewan’s Agriculture in the Classroom program is one of fair’s sponsors.
AITC program manager Clarice Springford said children love awards, which is why the group gives a binder to the winning agriculture projects in the junior, intermediate and senior levels at the province’s 12 regional shows.
“We’re just trying to let kids know that agriculture is important in Saskatchewan,” she said.
An example of that is a project by Kimberly Richards, a Grade 8 student in Saskatoon who compared the genetic variation of flax plants.
But she had an advantage. Her father works at the University of Saskatchewan in plant breeding, so she had access to flax varieties, his knowledge and machines. But Richards still had to do the work.
She started growing flax in December and finished in late February. Her comparisons found that the varieties from Brazil, Russia and China had a wide diversity of 50 percent. Japan had almost identical flax with only 0.2 percent diversity. Canadian flax had a 17 percent diversity.
Richards said this told her that a disease could easily wipe out Japan and Canada’s flax crops, while Brazil would still have half its crop intact. Richards’ flax variation project will be competing at the Saskatoon regional show April 3. She has plans to expand the project for next year’s science fair, possibly to include wheat.
While her plant experiment is sophisticated, she said she probably won’t study science at university.
“I’m more interested in humanities.”
