Hopson Middle School scientists study bowhead whales and lava lamps, compare clams to humans, make music with glasses, examine declining permafrost and make tea
Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 11:52AM 
Okay - I now have enough information to finalize my post on the young scientists from Barrow's Hopson Middle School who participated in the Alaska Science & Engineering Fair, held at Begich Middle School in Anchorage.
I begin with Molly Adams, who studied the bowhead whale and received an award for her work.
Molly posed the question, "why do bowhead whales float when harpooned?"
She advanced this hypothesis: "I think whales will float when harpooned because water is more dense than the whale. I know this because harpooned whales float. The whalers only put one float on the whale to keep it up when they harpoon it because of all the blubber."
She conducted experiments in which she floated blubber in different mixtures of water mixed with sodium chloride (table salt), baking soda, epsom salt and just plain tap water.
In all these cases, the blubber floated.
Trenton Sovalik likes to watch the mysterious colored globules inside a lava lamp float up, sink, float up, sink and just keep doing it over and over - but he did not why it happened. So he made lava lamps in three bottles to find out. He mixed oil, water, food coloring and salt together and applied heat to the bottom.
He determined that when the oil is close to the heat source it expands, becomes less dense and rises to the top. There, it cools, sinks toward the bottom, turning wax-like, then heats up and the process repeats itself.
Emily Brower loves music, so she made her own musical instruments out of bottles. She found that she could control the pitch each bottle would ring at when struck by filling each bottle with a different level of water.
Update: I have just learned that today is Emily's birthday. I don't which birthday, but as soon as I find out, I will add it in.
Happy birthday, Emily!
Randy Patkotak explored the impacts of global warming on permafrost and discovered that the permafrost is shrinking.
Nicole Anderson's project was "Clams vs. Humans" and she worked off the hypothesis that "the muscles of a clam will be similar to the muscles of a human."
To find out if these was indeed the case, "we used a standard clam and a standard human. We then precided to compare and contrast their muscles."
To accomplish this, it was necessary to engage in a little dissection work, so she had to get out her dissecting knife, scissors and screwdriver and then start cutting and dissecting...
...clams, that is. Nicole dissected clams... to do her study of human muscles, she went to the internet.
Her analysis revealed that "the muscles in a clam and human help them move. The clam and human muscles give them strength. The muscles in the clam and human are strong in the body."
Nicole's conclusion:
"There are similarities and difference between clams and humans. Both have muscles. Humans have over 500 muscles and clams have three main muscles."
Ariana Salamat loves tea and did a study of tea and how sugar dissolves in. I am not certain what all she discovered, but I agree with her - tea is good.
View images as slides (includes high school scientists from yesterday)
Reader Comments (4)
Aw, these kids are going to be the scientists of tomorrow ... or they will at least appreciate the understanding that science gives us. They, their parents, friends and teachers should be very proud of them.
Bravo to all the Barrow Scientists! I have learned a lot from reading about the Fair. I wish I could have been there to learn even more.
Congratulations to all the young people from Barrow who participated in the Science Fair !
(and from all over Alaska and America )
There are all kinds of knowledge and learning the methods and framework of each is a lot of work.
Science is such a biggie , with so many things to learn just to get to the point to be able to do projects like these.
Best wishes to each and every one of these young people. Your families and neighbors are so proud of you!!
Thank you Bill for sharing all this!
My dad was a science and math teacher, my whole childhood was a set of projects and experiments to see what kids might learn from this and that
I had a fabulous "kidhood " being the guinea-kid and his students still seek him out over 50 years later with tales of where their studies in 7th and 8th grade have taken them.
Those all sound like amazing projects! Congrats to everyone and nicely done!