SCIENCE NERD!

A couple of weeks ago Adrianna's school had a SCIENCE FAIR for all the 5th and 6th graders. Now we have done Science Fair projects before--in third grade a snoozer one about mirrors--I was all about trying to blow something up--but NO! It had so be some boring thing about mirrors. I think I was finally able to lose the display board for that one when we moved (we of course had to save the MIRROR). Last year she did another project with a couple of other girls in her class. They didn't start it until the day before it was due (the SCIENCE FAIR at that school was an optional activity) so needless to say it didn't make much of an impression on the judges and I don't think I ever even knew what their project was. HOWEVER--this year and this school was very different! All the fifth and sixth graders participated and they had a lot of time in school to work on their presentation boards, charts, graphs and other written information. Adrianna also spent a ton of time on it at home (fortunately--he,he ;)--for her she was sick a few days during the preparation phase and so she had extra time at home to work on her masterpiece.

Her original idea had been to hatch chicks--not an idea that we as parents living in the big city in a "pet free" home were too keen on. Fortunately it didn't take too long for her to come to her senses about the chick idea--the part about it being winter and not an ideal time to hatch babies, and also the most convincing, was the part where we told her that NO we were NOT going to pay $100 to order a automatic egg rotating incubator online, nor were we going to spend nearly that much for all the parts to make our own incubator out of a Styrofoam ice chest and then have to still put it together as a little chicken hatching suite! I know, we are mean parents (and proud of it).

So, idea number two, which was much more workable, was to do an experiment on synaesthesia (no, in case you are wondering, I had never heard of it before either) It isn't a contagious disease. It has nothing do with germs, noxious mold, stinky fumes, or thank goodness, live poultry--or any other living organism either. On the negative side it also doesn't have anything to do with causing an explosion--darn! The title of this project: "Which age group of people have more of a sense of synaesthesia?"

Now I am sure you are waiting breathlessly to know what exactly this involved. And also--what the heck is SYNAESTHESIA? In short it is a cross-over between sensory pathways in the brain. Where colors may evoke tastes or smells. Also sometimes music can be involved. For her experiment Adrianna (with a little help from me) baked 400 tiny cookies--exactly alike except she colored them differently with food coloring (red, blue, green and brown). She then had 100 people taste one of each color of cookie and tell her what they thought they tasted like. She got all kinds of reactions and tastes--they were really all vanilla flavored.

first you mix the cookies, then you roll and cut the cookies!

She was one of the winners of her school SCIENCE FAIR and so got to go on to the next level--the Charter School Fair. That was held yesterday and she was a big WINNER there so now she gets to go on to the next level--this one has cash ($) and prizes not just nerdly glory! Who knows how far she can go--well not as far as she could have gone last year because I just went online to the big National SCIENCE FAIR website and found out they have suspended their program this year for lack of sponsors--dang that means no possibility of an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C. this year!

I think she and Jordan (another girl in her class that also got to compete yesterday) had the most fun yesterday meeting the boys across the aisle from their displays and flirting with them. They didn't use the flirting word--they were just "talking science projects." . . . . right?

Adrianna and Jordan--we didn't get pictures of the boys across the aisle. . . .