First-ever Science Fair at Stone Hill

Posted 3/16/16

The sixth-grade students at Stone Hill Elementary School presented the results of their findings on a wide variety of independently run tests and experiments at the first-ever school Science Fair, …

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First-ever Science Fair at Stone Hill

LITTLEST SCIENCE FAIR JUDGES: The second-graders in Julie Manzi’s and Margie Hurley’s classes were hard at work as they toured the science fair. They asked questions of the young scientists and took copious notes on their findings.

TOUGH QUESTIONS: Ashley Loiselle and her sixth-grade peers had to step up their presentations when questioned by the second-graders in Manzi’s and Hurley’s classes. Loiselle was able to describe her nail polish experiment, which determined that her hypothesis was correct – Sally Hansen nail polish did in fact last longer, even when used on her dominant hand, which gets the most use. Loiselle used five different types of nail polish, one on each finger of her two hands.

BEST FOOT FORWARD: Brooklyn Kyriakakis asked the question “Which dance shoe helps you do the most turns?” She utilized tap, jazz, pointe, ballet, and toe undies dance shoes in her experiment and found that thanks to the metal component found on the tap shoes, that style of shoe provided the best turn, followed by jazz. Pointe shoes came in last place in Kyriakakis’ experiment.

WHAT TO WEAR IN THE RAIN: Somrith Chiemruom explored a variety of fabrics and conducted a Fabric Water Absorption Test on each. He hypothesized that the cotton fabric would be the one to absorb the most water, and his hypothesis was correct. Chiemruom determined that cotton absorbed 15 ml of water, burlap and silk tied at absorbing 10 ml of water, polyester absorbed two ml of water, and wool absorbed just one ml of water.

DON’T BRING THIS CHOCOLATE TO THE BEACH: Stephanie Huayta chose several different types of chocolates and hypothesized which one would be the first to melt. Huayta conducted her experiment using Three Musketeers, Dark Chocolate, Cookies and Cream, Hershey Kisses, Snickers, and Rolos. She found that the Three Musketeers took the longest to melt, while Hershey Kisses were the first to melt.

EXERCISE WITH VIDEO GAMES: Anthony Nardolillo explored whether video games were more than just a sedentary form of entertainment. He hypothesized that only two of the three games he used in his experiment would actually raise one’s heart rate when played, but found that in fact the Zumba, Wii Sports, and Just Dance games all raised one’s heart rate enough to be considered cardio exercise.

Posted Wednesday, March 16, 2016 6:48 pm

Each student presented their topic, hypothesis, materials, procedure, and results on a tri-fold science fair board to family, friends, and the school community. The second-grade students in both Julie Manzi’s and Margie Hurley’s classes arrived at the Science Fair with clipboards, pencils, and questions about topic, process, and procedure for each student they visited.

The sixth-graders had a number of weeks to come up with a question, research it, work on their projects, and then analyze and document their results, which also allowed ample time for their experiments to play out.

Text and photos by Jen Cowart