The future of our world

Morgan Rooney
MSMU Class of 2020

(12/2019) November was an exciting month for our beautiful community in Emmitsburg. For those who haven’t heard of this yearly tradition, every year in the fall semester, Mother Seton School holds its yearly science fair competition. I was super excited to write about an event like this, as I had not been to anything similar since I was a kid myself. I thought it would be interesting to see how this science fair compared to the science fairs my school had when I was a kid. Along with seeing what kind of creative ideas the students would come up with, I was very eager to support the local school by attending their science fair.

Each student, ranging from 3rd grade to 8th grade at Mother Seton School have the chance to conduct creative experiments or build useful inventions. The students compete for first, second, and third place, along with the title of Grand Champion. The students created a variety of projects that stretched across the Mother Seton School gym.

Although the competition lasts all day, the public is invited to attend in the evening to see all the creative projects and support these future scientists and inventors. It was great seeing all the students, parents, and other community members attending the event.

The students are assigned their science fair project at the beginning of the school year and they manage their time to complete their experiments and inventions in time for the annual fair. The students were judged by 11 adults and 7 high school alumni of Mother Seton School. The students who receive a ribbon are highly encouraged to participate in the county science fair where I’ve been told that the students have been very successful and won many times in the previous years.

I had the opportunity to speak to a parent of a 6th grade student who receive a second place ribbon. This project measured the electricity generated from fruits and vegetables of different acidities to determine the relationship between the two.

"It’s important to articulate ideas as recording data." says Joshua Hochschild, the father of the student. "You might realize you’re answering a different question. It’s a valuable process to go through to experience feedback of learning."

Although there were 98 participants, each with a unique project, there were certain projects that really stood out to me. Some of these were the invention of a biodegradable bottle cap, and an experiment to determine the foundation preference of honeybees. It’s great to see that the students created such useful projects that can influence the future. It gives me a new hope for future generations.

There were other projects that were fun to read about and definitely worth mentioning. This includes an invention that separates skittles by colors and an experiment of paw preferences in cats. The thing I was most impressed with was the creativity of the students when coming up with their science fair experiments and inventions.

This year, the Grand Champion was a 7th grade student, Carli, who conducted an experiment to determine if there is a relationship between eye color and after images. Her experiment was successful in determining that there is a relationship and people with different eye colors see after images differently. I was impressed, and clearly, so were the judges.

I was able to speak with the Mother Seton School science teacher, Danielle Kuykendall.

"Projects like the biodegradable bottle cap really stand out. As a green school, part of the rubric is how it ties into the real world." Says Kuykendall. "I want the kids to come away from this loving science!" she continues. "I always tell them to choose something they really want to know the answer to."

From my own personal perspective, it was really exciting and important to support this local event. These students are the future of our country and most importantly, the future of our world. The creativity and thoroughness of these projects was really eye opening.

Going to this event really brought me back to when I was in fourth grade and required to do a science fair project. Although my project may have not been as useful as many of these, it taught me a lot about the scientific process, time management, and organizational skills.

All three of these things I learned have become very useful in my life and will become useful in any career these kids will pursue one day. The scientific theory is important as it teaches you about error, correction, and questioning everything. These are important things to learn early on so you can always improve in any subject of your choosing, including science and what I do: write. Even though writing is something that you wouldn’t generally compare with scientific subjects like biology, chemistry, and physics, it’s important to know all about correcting your mistakes and questioning yourself to be successful.

Time management and organization are obviously other skills that are very useful in any field. To be successful, for myself, I need to be careful to know exactly what I need to do, and when I need to do it by. A lot of the time, this means I need to break assignments and projects into increments so I can effectively get projects done on time and have them done correctly. Both of these skills are obviously necessary so it is important to practice and learn how to perform them correctly. This science fair is a great example of using all of these skills to create successful projects.

Overall, the science fair was very eye opening to what the youth around us are capable of and it was very inspiring to me personally. As an adult, I am glad to see the young people in our society being involved with projects, with many of these projects having the potential of serving our community in the future. I will go forward now knowing that the future generation is one that will bring great innovations to our world.

Read other articles by Morgan Rooney