Of fruit flies and windmills

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DAVID LIPNOWSKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS (April 25, 2010) Ecole River Height students Scott Bachus (left) (13) and Chris McCallum (12) with their gold medals in biology/animal science (junior high) and thier science fair project at the University of Winnipeg Duckworth Centre Sunday afternoon.

11That's the lesson learned from Scott Bachus and Chris McCallum, two Grade 7 students at École River Heights School, who parlayed McCallum's messy locker into a gold medal in the animal biology category at the Manitoba Schools Science Symposium on Sunday.

"Chris left a couple of lunches in there, (including) a rotten orange and some banana peels and they started to grow fruit flies. His locker had to be sterilized. It was disgusting," Scott said.

"Some people actually barfed," Chris, 12, said sheepishly. "Some of them had to go home from school."

Armed with a real-life petri dish, the pair used the health hazard as inspiration for their project comparing the pros and cons of organic fruits versus their chemically enhanced counterparts. The greater the swarm of fruit flies, the healthier the fruit, they said.

Scott, 13, said the project's findings, coupled with research they did on the types of pesticides to which fruit is often exposed and the possible health risks that could follow -- including birth defects and hormone disruptions -- has convinced him to eat more organic products.

"It's scary that over a long period of time, you could damage your body by eating fruit," he said.

Six other budding scientists trying to make the world a better place will represent Manitoba at the Canada-Wide Science Fair.

They looked for solutions to problems ranging from noise from wind farms to breast cancer research to better weather forecasting.

Garden City Collegiate's Shannon Ball is making her second trip to the Canada-Wide Science Fair with Weather: Forecasting its future -- taking the 'pulse' of the value people add to forecasting using lightning data.

Cody Shaw took home four awards for his Phononic crystals revisited.

The top-prize winner at the provincial science fair tapped into the know-how of a Hutterite colony and the brains and equipment at the University of Manitoba to solve windmill noise.

"The low-frequency noise can cause mental problems for people, like they're not able to sleep or they can't think straight," said the Grade 11 Fort Richmond Collegiate student.

The phononic crystals -- specially arranged, hollow tubes -- affect how sound waves travel.

"Could you use it to help a common problem like windmill farms' noise?" the budding physicist wondered. The Crystal Springs Hutterite colony where his mom works as a financial manager manufactured his schematic with clear vertical tubes standing in a metal case. For months, Cody spent six hours a day, four days a week at the University of Manitoba using high-tech sound equipment to design and test the phononic crystals. His dad works as a plumber at the U of M and introduced his son to professors and a graduate student who helped him with his project.

"Science is a large part of my life," said the 16-year-old. He learned from his experience grain silos near windmills could help to reduce the disturbing low-frequency noise caused by the whirring turbines.

The complexity of the projects heading to the national fair at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., next month left more than one visitor to the fair scratching his or her head.

Holy Ghost School's Dominic Slivinski's winning project was dubbed Super Stomata: Gas Exchange in Trees.

Acadia Junior High's Allen Liu's project was entitled the Effects of the Canola Genes STM and CLVI on Arahidrosis Thaliana (L)...

Neilloy Roy of Fort Richmond Collegiate won for Production of viral RNA molecules to investigate the molecular mechanism of Congo hemorrhagic fever virus.

Kevin High School student Xichi Yang won for her science fair project SRAP expression and its role in breast cancer.

Alastair Komus, co-chairman of the 34th annual fair, which was held at the University of Winnipeg, said the 340 projects on hand displayed a "high standard of scientific research." Many of the students, who range from Grade 4 to Grade 12, return to the symposium year after year with increasingly complex projects.

"You can see them progress in their knowledge as they get older," he said.

Komus said organizers are doing their best to encourage the younger participants to make science a long-term pursuit. On Friday, many of the elementary school students took part in making paper rockets and catapults.

"We're trying to pique their interest and make them see the fun aspects of science," he said.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

�ñº To get the names and schools of hundreds of awards and medal winners, please check online at www.winnipegfreepress.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 26, 2010 B1