Experiment Proves Hypothesis: Pali Elementary Science Fair a Blast

More than 200 students displayed their projects at this year’s Palisades Elementary School Science Fair on Monday, Feb. 2. Students in kindergarten through grade five showed off their science skills and had the chance to present their projects to real scientists.

Fifth-graders’ projects were up for competition, with Jordan Carlin and Angela Lyman coming in first place. Isaac Alkin came in second and Zoe Reger came in third place.

Alkin’s project studied the effect of sugar on physical performance. To test his hypothesis that sugar would increase his physical performance, Alkin did three long jumps and three high jumps per day, measuring the distance each time, and counted how many jumps he could do in one minute.

“On the days I ate sugar I felt clumsy, my attention span was not great, and I had trouble falling asleep and waking up,” Alkin said of the days when his diet included sweets like chocolate, soda and ice cream.

But on the days when he did not eat sugar, Alkin could jump higher, farther and more times in a minute.

“I am actually surprised with my results,” Alkin told the Palisadian-Post.

Staying on the topic of sugar, fourth-grader Peter Garff created a visual display of the amount of sugar in popular drinks, appropriately titling his project “Rethink Your Drink.”

“Sugar is bad because it causes cavities and is unhealthy. You should only have it once in a while,” Garff explained, adding lemonade used to be one of his favorite drinks at special occasions like birthday parties, but he now plans on limiting how much of the beverage he consumes after concluding it had the most sugar out of drinks like chocolate milk, fruit juice, Red Bull, soda, coconut water and H20.

Sierra Sugarman, a Junior Reporter with the Post, turned pennies green using white vinegar, concluding that it takes 24 hours for pennies to turn green.

“I thought they would be a lighter green but they turned really dark,” Sugarman said, adding that she has participated in the science fair for three years in a row.

Will Woods, in second grade, made a hovercraft out of wax paper, wood and tape. Fourth-grader Sophia Vonderohe got a chance to ride on the hovercraft, which left her sitting fully off of the floor. Vonderohe said it felt “kind of like sitting on a boat but it’s not rocking back and forth.”

Third-graders Ava Dixon and Hallie Bird experimented on popcorn brands to determine which brand “popped the most with the least amount of kernels left over,” concluding that Snack Artist popcorn popped the most, crowning it most “pop”ular, despite their hypothesis which had its money on Orville Redenbacher’s.