Struble Elementary hosts annual fifth grade Science Fair
By Samantha Bambino
The Times
Are you smarter than a fifth-grader? When testing knowledge against the students of Bensalem’s Russell C. Struble Elementary School, probably not.
On Thursday, March 28, the school, located at 4300 Bensalem Blvd., hosted its annual fifth-grade Science Fair. During two sessions at 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., the auditorium was chock-full of perfectly constructed poster boards, each explaining the experiment its respective owner conducted.
“They have been working on this since mid-December, and they have been following the scientific method,” explained teacher Marcella Reppenhagen. “We do a lot of experiments and STEM projects in school, so a lot of that was incorporated into this. They have been researching and experimenting the entire time, and they did a phenomenal job. I am so proud of them. There are some really impressive experiments here.”
Each student was granted the freedom to choose their own topic, with Reppenhagen reviewing each one to ensure it followed the scientific method. This involves asking a question, conducting research, constructing a hypothesis, experimenting, and analyzing the results to draw a conclusion.
Poised and ready to present on his project, “Do Sugary Beverages Effect Your Teeth?” was the well-spoken Maxwell Kuziora, who was fed up with news stations warning consumers of health risks associated with soda.
“I decided, it’s time to get down to business. Are sugary beverages really bad for our teeth?” he said, adding that his mother doesn’t let him drink Coca-Cola because of these supposed risks.
Kuziora filled separate containers with milk, lemonade, water, iced tea and Coca-Cola, and placed an egg in each. For three weeks, he studied the impact the liquids had on the eggs, forming the hypothesis that soda would do the most damage. By the end of the study, the Coca-Cola cracked the egg a little, the lemonade formed bubbles, and the milk turned the egg yellow. But this was nothing compared to the effect of the iced tea.
“By week two, it got terrible. It was soft to the touch, it was like it was rotting,” he said. “By week three, the iced tea egg was pretty untouchable. It was scary to look at.”
Though Kuziora was stunned that the soda had less of an impact, he wasn’t surprised at the outcome of the water-submerged egg, which remained white.
“I’m not recommending to go three weeks without brushing your teeth if you just drink water, but hypothetically…,” he said.
Several feet away, Lucas Ferrandez stood proudly next to his poster board, which was emblazoned with the words, “Don’t Write With Your Right.” Ferrandez’s experiment studied whether or not someone can write efficiently with their non-dominant hand. He distributed worksheets to a handful of his classmates, who completed them in four minutes. On the sheets were dotted letters, which the students traced over with their non-dominant hand. Once collected, the pages were reviewed by Ferrandez, who measured how close his peers were to dotted letters.
“It was a test of completion and accuracy,” he said. “The reason I needed to know this, really, is say someone injured their dominant hand. They need to know if it’s actually possible to write with the other. I assumed it would be, since you can train yourself to do literally anything.”
Unlike Kuziora, Ferrandez’s hypothesis was correct. Nearly all of the participants were able to accurately trace over the letters, with most hitting peak performance between day three and six.
An intrigued crowd of younger Struble students gathered around Maddox Ju, who utilized his father’s power drill to determine how the angle of a fan blade affects the way air flows.
“My brother, me and him have bunk beds and he always steals the fan when I’m using it, so that was kind of the idea,” he explained.
Ju designed blades at 30-, 20- and 10-degree angles, and predicted that the 30-degree would work best and produce the most air flow. His hypothesis was correct, with that blade spinning at the highest rate.
Additional experiments included the impact of music on plants, the best liquid to clean a dirty penny, which bubble gum brand blows the biggest bubble, and whether caffeine helps plants to grow faster. ••
Samantha Bambino can be reached at [email protected]
