“Science is probably my favorite subject, especially this year because we learned how everything is made up,” said Shubhanker Kapoor, a fifth grade student at Mohr Elementary School, as he works on his science project for the district-wide Science Fun Fair. For his project, Kapoor studied how much energy is released from different nuts by lighting almonds, peanuts and cashews on fire and seeing how much they raise water temperature while burning.
“I was reading different projects on the Internet and I thought it was interesting how a nut could heat up water,” he said.
Kapoor is one of nearly 4,000 students from Pleasanton and Dublin schools participating in this year’s Science Fun Fair. All nine of Pleasanton’s elementary schools are participating and six of Dublin’s elementary schools, as well as elementary-age students at Fallon School, which is K-8.
Aside from its size, what sets this Fair apart from other science fairs is that there are no prizes. The whole point of the event is for students to have fun and get excited about science, said Karen Rodriguez who has organized the event in Pleasanton for the past 10 years with her husband Dave.
“Our primary goal is for kids to have fun with science and to see that it goes on around them in everyday life–to see science as something they can explore throughout their entire life,” Rodriguez said.
What also makes this science fair different is that students present their projects to volunteer interviewers from the community. More than 300 volunteers help with this portion of the fair, and while many are professionals in the science industry, people in non-science professions help out as well. High school students from the AP science classes are also a major portion of the volunteer interviewers. Seeing high school students involved with science is really “neat” for the elementary school kids, Rodriguez said. Students present their projects to the volunteers at their individual school sites Tuesday, March 28.
The following day, Wednesday, March 29, all the projects are put on display at the Alameda County Fairgrounds where local companies and organizations in the science field will also have booths and experiments for families to check out, including Clorox, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Oracle.
“Some of the groups like Clorox and Oracle really give the kids an insight into what’s going on and have fun with bangs and explosions,” Rodriguez said. “It gives students a chance to see some of the activities that go on at high technical levels.”
If the goal of the fair is to get students excited about science, Kapoor is a good example of its success. This year is the third project he’s done for the science fair. His first one was in second grade when his project explored why water won’t mix with oil and then again in fourth grade when he made a machine that picks up paperclips. In fact, the science fair has become something for the whole family. Kapoor’s younger brother Sahil helped make the paperclip machine project last year and now, as a first grade student at Mohr, Sahil is doing his own project. He studied how water color will change plants by putting celery sticks in different colored water and watching the results. His project fits right in with the fair’s theme, “The Colors of Science.”
“We want everyone to find out how colorful science is,” Rodriguez said.
