2005 Science Fair Awards

York County Science and Engineering Fair, March 7, 2005

Junior Division
Winner: Morgan Rehnberg, York Suburban High School, "Decomposition of Leaves."  In-stream leaf decomposition rates of three species of maples, with randomized placement of sample packs, and using standard deviation to guide group mean comparisons.

Honorable Mention:  Brice Collamer,  Southwestern High School, "Frequency Output in Electric Guitars." Confidence intervals on group means used to guide
comparisons of frequency output under several different guitar settings.

Senior Division
Winner: Joshua Salvi, York Catholic High School, "The Whorfian Hypothesis: Multilingualism and Its Effects."  Verbal skills measurements are related to linguistic
determinism, using standard deviation to guide group mean comparisons.  

Honorable Mention: Jessica Peet and Michael Simmons, Southwestern High School, "Can Sound Move Water?"  Experimental results are evaluated with non-linear
regressions, and mean deviations are considered in group mean comparisons.

Capital Area Science and Engineering Fair, March 14, 2005

Junior Division
Winner: Vincent Piscioneri, St. Theresa School, "Don't Get Mad, Get BJ's."  A comparison of store-brand and national-brand trash bag strength, using 90% confidence intervals to guide group-mean comparisons.   

Honorable Mention: Ayesha Ali, Hershey Middle School, "The Effect of Chocolate on Memory, Concentration, and Mathematics."  A task-performance evaluation of chocolate-fortified test subjects, compared to control subjects using t-tests and non-parametric two-sample tests (for groups with obvious outliers).

Honorable Mention: Breton Asken, Good Shepherd School, "Does the Outcome Affect the Outcome? - The Yogi Berra Corollary."  Do science projects with "significant" findings get better grades? T-tests are used to compare teacher evaluations of studies with inconclusive results to evaluations of those same studies with the data altered to yield clear differences.

Honorable Mention: Bryan Maglia, St. Joan of Arc School, Does Temperature have an Effect on Electrical Current?" ANOVA is used to evaluate differences among test group results. 

Senior Division
Winner:  Nicholas Boaz, Susquenita High School "Does Probiotic Medicine Offer an Alternative to Gastrointestinal Illness?"  A study of "good" intestinal flora, using experiment-wise ANOVA and pair-wise t-tests to evaluate the results.      

Honorable Mention:  Evan Murphy,  Bishop McDevitt High School, "The Effects of Heat on the Strength of Duct Tape Adhesive."  Stressed separation rates on folded duct tape samples subjected to various temperature conditions are compared using box plots, regression and t-tests.