Hundreds of middle and high school students from across Iowa are fielding questions from judges, entering the second and final day of the State Science and Technology Fair of Iowa, underway at Iowa State University.
Fair director Alexa Groff says the competition is gathering Iowa’s best and brightest students to showcase their most creative ideas and extensive research in subjects from animal science to astronomy.
“We have more than 750 students exhibiting around 650 projects, and I believe we have about 86 junior and senior high schools that span the state of Iowa,” Groff says. “From last year to this year, we have over 150 more students than we had at the fair last year, which is exciting growth.”
Groff, a STEM Education Specialist at ISU within the Iowa 4H Youth Development program, says the topics of these science projects get more sophisticated every year. There are 16 main categories, including chemistry, computers, biomedical and health sciences, and cellular and molecular biology.
“Every year they get more and more complex, which is fun, but it’s also fun to see the kids meet different people that are here,” Groff says. “It could be professors at Iowa State University, it could be the DNR, it could be a local farmer, but they’re learning from other people to help their research. That’s really cool because some of those connections that they make are lifetime connections.”
Roughly ten percent of the middle school competitors will be advancing to a national science fair, while the high schoolers are aiming for even larger rewards.
“We have over $300,000 of prizes, awards, scholarships that we are offering this year,” Groff says. “Our top nine projects at the high school level move on to the International Science Fair. And so they will actually go on to compete in Phoenix, Arizona. There’ll be 1,500 finalists from all across the world that come together to compete.”
One of last year’s Iowa champions was Benjamin Lothamer from the Mid-Prairie Homeschool Assistance Program. His project was called: “Design and Development of an Adaptable Gear Based Myo-electric Robotic Prosthetic Hand Using Additive Manufacturing and Novel Visco-Elastic Material.”
The competition in Ames concludes late tonight with the Grand Awards Ceremony.