Purpose: To find out whether music can make rice and beans dance.
Hypothesis: Rice is lighter so it should be the better dancer.
Finding: Rice will dance to anything.
The sound wave and vibration experiment to see how rice and beans react to rap music was only one of Addison Mizner Elementary School's contributions to this year's Science & Engineering Fair, which was open to the public on Wednesday.
The Boca Raton school is competing with 45 other public and private elementary schools in the event, which is held annually at the South Florida Fairgrounds in West Palm Beach.
Aside from competing in categories from botany to zoology, students participated in a bridge-making contest based on how many pounds of pressure the homemade structures could withstand.
"I love when they smash them down. That's the cool part," said 13-year-old Larry Calhoun, as engineers from Pratt & Whitney tested his bridge.
A student in Roosevelt Middle School's science and technology magnet program, Calhoun cringed as his bridge began to buckle under about 2 pounds of pressure.
Many schools and families visited the exhibit center, strolling through a sea of projects that tried to answer age-old questions that have plagued man for years. Queries like: "Paper or plastic?" or "What cooks faster in a solar oven, biscuits or cookies?"
"I ate the biscuits. I couldn't eat the cookies," said 15-year-old Jesse Both as he explained the results of his experiment.
Both and his Jupiter Christian School classmates spent the afternoon looking at more than 1,200 exhibits that also included middle and high school projects.
Corinne Measelle, the School District's elementary science program coordinator, said she was amazed by the caliber of projects this year.
"Students are starting in kindergarten, so by the time they get to the third or fourth grade, they can do some phenomenal stuff," Measelle said.
Sandpiper Shores Elementary School in Boca Raton took on the task of finding out which vowel is found most often in a box of 14-ounce Alpha Bits.
Manatee Elementary in Lake Worth finally discovered which brand of cheese pizza will stretch the farthest. Their method: Lay one slice from each of the top sellers on a counter and stretch until it becomes so thin that it breaks. Their results matched their hypothesis: Little Caesars stretches the farthest.
Judging will take place today.