Science projects that could someday help in everything from the fight against skin cancer to the exploration of Mars were all in the mix as students from around Ohio competed at the 70th anniversary State Science Day.
"It's a very rich experience," said Michael Woytek, CEO of the Ohio Academy of Science, which sponsors the event. "The students get feedback from professionals, and it is inspiring to see the next generation of scientific innovators take the stage."
The day-long event, held Saturday in French Field House on the Ohio State University campus, involved 1,100 students in grades 5 through 12 from 300 schools in 65 counties. The judges — 500 scientific and engineering professionals from around Ohio — not only evaluated the students' scientific research and technological designs but also their skill in communicating what the projects were all about.
Along the way, the judges also passed along their thoughts to the students on how to improve the projects. Not that many students needed such advice, said judges Gage Spears and Zack Ross from the Ohio Osteopathic Association.
"I never got this far as a student," Spears said, smiling. "I think my project was whether my dog was choosing food based on a preferred flavor. These kids are working on things like teeth whitening — it's very impressive."
One project aimed to help in the exploration of Mars.
Rachel Kahler, an 11th grader at Bellbrook High School, was in her fifth year of competing in the event. In most previous years, she focused on robotics. Last year, she switched to outer space. This year her project was "Martian Renewable Energy Forecast Model."
"I was always interested in space," she said, "and I wondered what I could do to help people who want to go to Mars." Her project looked at how much energy solar panels and wind turbines could produce on Mars. Then she compared that output with the energy needs of an outpost on the planet, based on power use by astronauts in such examples as the International Space Station and the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation habitat.
"It's important to know this because if you have a blackout on Mars you could lose life support and astronauts would die," she said.
Another student, Shruthi Ravichandran, a 9th grader at Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights, had a project that was much closer to home: "Learning to Detect Malignant Skin Lesions from Photographic Images."
"I saw that there was such a high survival rate from skin cancer if it's detected early," she said. So, her project involved creating a program code that would essentially teach the computer how to identify skin cancer based on photographs of lesions.
"My end goal is to create an app that will be able to take a photo of a skin lesion and classify whether it's a melanoma or benign," she said.
One student even managed to use the event as part of his project. New Albany 5th grader Charlie Wilcoxon sat cross-legged on the floor and attempted to focus on such tasks as playing an electronic game and reading a book as he demonstrated "The Effect Noise Has on Concentration." At least in his case, noise seemed to have little effect — nothing disturbed him.