Science Fair, color me crazy

 I may be one of the few people left on this planet that actually LOVES a science fair.  I know, there are lots of people with bad memories of all nighters trying to put a board together or staying up to fake some data so they could get a good grade.  But, I think a kid can learn a lot from doing a science project and entering it into a science fair.

 I didn't get much sleep myself the night before this fair, or much of the week before the fair either, and every year I swear I'm never going to run another fair again.  But here I am today, the day after the fair on a Science Fair High, planning next year's fair already.  Color me Crazy!  The fair was a great success and I'm feeling quite giddy.  We had 170 participating projects this year, more than double last year's group.  I will take credit a little for that because I didn't let the County office take over like I did last year.  I tried as hard as I could to get the word out.  One other school had their own science fair and entered over 100 projects in the fair.

As always, we had our students come to the fair all throughout the day to see the projects and they really get into learning some science as they 'judge' each project as good or bad.  They can tell who put in effort and who was just trying to get their finished before the deadline.

The project pictured was the overall winner and was about the angle of water hitting a water wheel and how much electricity was generated.  She will get $200 in addition to the plaque.  This student earned a special award for 'women in science'.  She was one of my students who was in a regular science class first semester.  I saw that she was misplaced and encouraged her to switch to the honors class (where students have to do the science fair project).  She wasn't too sure about making the switch, and she was so proud that her project won 3rd prize and also got this special recognition.  She gets to go to a dinner with other young women in science and perhaps this will be a turning point that leads her down a path to studying science in the future.