PRESQUE ISLE, Maine – The Presque Isle Regional Career & Technical Center’s second annual AgriScience Science Fair was held last Thursday night, and once again, students proved that learning can be fun.
Thirty-six student projects lined the upper gymnasium at Presque Isle High School as parents, students and judges perused the various displays.
Freshman Justin Lewin researched chicken feed.
“I took 12 chickens and split them into two groups of six,” said Lewin. “Each group was fed a different kind of feed. One was fed scratch and the other was fed laying mesh, which is a specially-formulated food for chickens that are going to lay eggs. I wasn’t sure if laying mesh was actually improving egg production.
“After feeding them every day, watering them every day, cleaning them out weekly, and cleaning the pens every two weeks, I analyzed the data, collected the eggs and graded them according to the FDA’s standards,” he said. “I learned that the laying mesh did much better than the scratch. According to my data, what the manufacturers of laying mesh say is true.”
Lewin said he’s always had chickens, so his “Eggcellent Feed” project was a given.
“I had some young chickens that hadn’t started laying eggs yet,” he said, “so I thought that would be a good science project to do.”
Students were told in September they would have to do a science project.
“I’ve been working on this for a long time,” said Lewin, who won the zoology category.
Though not used to public speaking, Lewin said he’s comfortable with it. Each student was visited by two judges and explained their hypothesis and answered the judges’ questions.
“I was a little nervous,” he said, “but it seemed to go fine. They seemed to have a lot of questions, but I expected that.”
In addition to learning which feed worked best, Lewin said the science fair project taught him responsibility.
“I had to get things done at a certain time, we had to keep a journal, and things had to be done on a weekly basis,” he said, “so it taught me responsibility to get it done. As far as actually presenting my project at the science fair, it taught me not to talk with my hands. I enjoyed doing the project and I learned a lot from it.”
Senior Ben LeBlanc set out to determine which deer scent was most effective.
“I tested three different deer scents, Tink 69, Code Blue and Buck Bomb, and I picked them by which ones I’ve used in the past,” he said. “My hypothesis was that Buck Bomb was going to work the best from what I’ve heard in the past and how many I saw my father sell at the store during hunting season.
“I went out a total of 15 different times and tested each scent five times. I documented how many deer came in with each scent, what sex the deer was, and I concluded that Buck Bomb worked the best and brought in 14 out of 32 deer that I had come in,” said LeBlanc. “It might be how it sprays because it spreads out in a fog, which the wind carries it better than if you were to use a liquid scent that goes on a tree limb, but Buck Bomb seems to be the best.”
LeBlanc said he was lucky that he shot his deer early in the season and could then focus his attention on the science project.
“It took me about a month to complete my project, which is called ‘R U Attracted?’” he said. “I spent 31-and-a-half hours in the field documenting when the deer came in.”
LeBlanc said the science project was both fun and educational.
“I’m definitely going to use this information in my hunting experience next year,” he said. “It was really different actually being able to watch deer and not hunting, and not tell everybody where they were so I could keep doing my testing every time.”
This was LeBlanc’s first high school science project.
“This was very time-consuming and a lot more in-depth than anything I did in elementary school,” he said. “I learned a lot and it was fun doing it.”
Freshmen Joseph Allen and Lucas Chandler teamed up for their “Sludgin’” project.
“We had three plots. One of them had the sludge on it, one of them had Miracle Gro on it, and the other one was our control, which didn’t have anything on it,” said Allen. “We were trying to prove that sludge was more effective than Miracle Gro, and that’s what we learned.
“We took the three plots, packed them full of soil, sprinkled Timothy A hayseed on top, sprinkled dirt on top of that, and then applied our fertilizers to the first two,” he said. “We had a heat lamp down in the basement giving off ‘sunlight.’ It took nine days for the hayseed to grow, and sludge was more effective.”
Allen said the seed didn’t grow the first three days, but on day four it grew one centimeter.
“From there, they kept growing,” he said. “After nine days, it grew to 3.3 centimeters.”
Allen and Chandler spent about six months on the project, which won the botany category.
“It was a fun project,” said Chandler. “We’ve been best friends since the second grade, so it made sense to work together.”
Though the project was “a little stressful” at times, the duo said they were happy with the results.
“We’ll be participating in next year’s science fair, too,” said Allen, who has already given some thought to a possible research topic. “We applicate the sludge on top of the ground, but there’s a technique where you inject the sludge into the ground, so I’d kind of like to see which one is the better technique.”
According to ag science teacher Erin Argraves, the science projects had to fit into one of five categories: biochemistry/food science/microbiology, botany, engineering, environmental science, and zoology.
“It seemed like this year the strongest category was zoology,” said Argraves. “The projects in there were just phenomenal. The kids put weeks and weeks’ worth of effort into them and they really were thoroughly researched.
“Some projects stick out more than others, but all of the kids worked so hard,” she said. “We had 42 students involved in this year’s science fair, and I’m really happy with what they came up with. I am amazed. When some of these kids started, I was unsure about the direction they were going in, but they came together. I’m very impressed.”
Argraves said one positive aspect of the science fair is that students are given class time to work on it.
“Not all of them use it, or can do their testing in class depending on what they researched,” she said, “but they could type, and work on their reports in class. They had certain aspects due throughout the schoolyear, with the first being due in September. They really had to jump in.”
Students in seven different AgriScience classes participated in the science fair.
“This teaches the kids the scientific method and scientific reasoning,” said Argraves, “and this one event hits so many points of the Maine Learning Results. It’s a very hands-on approach, and the students can choose their own project, and what I love is that they chose things they were interested in and can use later in life.”
Students were judged on creativity, scientific thought, thoroughness, skill and clarity. Winners of the second annual AgriScience Science Fair were: Donald Frank (Biochemistry/Food Science/Microbiology) “When Turkeys Go Bad,” Joseph Allen and Lucas Chandler (Botany) “Sludgin’,” Jason Pratt and Dan Castle (Engineering) “Food Dehydrator,” Kayla Carney and Jacob Turner (Environmental Science) “Which Plant Dies Faster?” and Justin Lewin (Zoology) “Eggcellent Feed!”
The winners each received an original walking stick created by Kim Theriault of Mapleton. The sticks were hand-designed and decorated by Theriault and feature pictures and quotes related to the five categories. All students who participated in the science fair received a certificate.
Judges for the science fair included Andy Yaeger, Bob Sirois, Kathryn DeLong, Brandon Roope, Carl Lovely, Dana Allison, Eric Hendrickson, John Durepo, Larry Fox, Linda Palmer, MaryAnne Buck, Murray Blackstone, Robert Gross, Melissa Vance and Terry Sandusky.
