17-02-2025
Moldy burgers, impaired senses, tap dancing highlight 61st Howard County Science Fair
Ever wondered what fast food burger has the best ingredients?
That was the question Mukhil Madhan posed for his science fair project.
To determine this, the Western seventh grader put burgers from restaurants in clear, plastic containers and let them sit for four weeks. He then observed the amount of mold that grew on each.
One burger had lots of mold. That's a good sign. The burger from another local fast food restaurant, however, looked nearly the same.
'The bacteria and stuff doesn't want to eat that,' said Hannah Sandefur, Mukhil's science teacher.
'Moldy Burgers' was one of the projects presented at Saturday's 61st annual Howard County Science Fair.
The event featured students from Eastern and Western.
That included Western Middle School students Sienna Osborn and Savana Halterman. They looked at how impairing senses impacted a person's ability to discern flavors. To do so, they had people taste Skittles and then repeated the process blindfolding them, then plugging their nose and lastly, removing both senses.
Surprisingly, almost half of people struggled to identify the correct flavor when blindfolded.
'I think a lot of people relied on seeing the color and recognizing the color as the flavor,' Savana said.
More than one in three people — ranging from kids to adults — could not guess the flavor when both of their senses were impaired.
They got the idea for their Skittles taste test experiment from a TV show.
'One thing I would do is boys versus girls, see if they have different taste buds,' Sienna said.
For their efforts, Savana and Sienna were first-prize winners. They received a cash prize.
'It was fun, but it was a big test,' Sienna said. 'I would do it again.'
Ethan Faulkner and Jude Siscel tested if other types of oil could replace petroleum in a two-stroke engine. The boys tested castor, hydraulic and soybean oils.
'We found out castor is probably most reliable,' Jude said.
Castor oil is a vegetable oil that comes from castor beans.
The two listened to the engine of an old chainsaw as they tested the different oils.
'We learned the effects of not having a compressible oil,' Jude said.
Castor oil came out on top.
'Made the engine smoke less,' Ethan said.
Soybean oil, on the other hand, did not.
'The entire barn smelled like beans for a week,' Jude said.
The boys said if their project had a next step it would be testing the long-term effects of using those oils. They enjoyed sharing their results with the judges Saturday.
'I didn't know talking to a bunch of people about two-stroke engines would be fun,' Jude said.
Other projects included Sadie Weeks' look at what surface produced the loudest sound when wearing tap dancing shoes and Corbin Perryman testing the effects of freezing and boiling temperatures had on a magnet's ability to pick up paper clips.
The science fair is held each year at Indiana University Kokomo. Staff, faculty, alumni and students served as judges, interviewing students about their projects.
'I think the kids who are participating in science fair love science,' said Deb Jaworski, science fair committee member and IUK math lecturer. 'It's become very contagious.'
She said many of the students she judged wanted to do the science fair again.
Absent on Saturday were high school science fair projects. Linda Wilson and her Northwestern students have been a mainstay of the science fair for years, however the teacher retired at the end of last school year. Some of her students went on to show their projects at the International Science Fair.
She is now an adjunct teacher at IUK and helped judge projects Saturday.
The Howard County Science Fair was once a widely attended event by all schools in the county, but it has dwindled over the years.
This is the first year in awhile Western has had a presence, thanks to Sandefur.
Sandefur and her students worked after school every Friday for months on their projects. She intends to include both seventh and eighth graders next year.
'It builds questions,' she said.
Sarah Bonesteel at Eastern takes the lead in helping those students with their projects.
'She has such energy and enthusiasm for science,' Jaworski said.
Science fair participants did a microscope lab with IUK faculty as part of the day's activities.
