Revving Up for the Science Fair
On Saturday, February 25th, five Broomfield High School seniors arrived at Platt Middle School to compete in the annual BVSD Regional Science Fair. Kaviya Chidambaram, Tashi Garret, Emily Kirk, Rachel Stodden, and Anna Decker had been cultivating their projects for quite some time and were ready to present their learning.

Prepping for the Big Day
Starting back in August, these five students began preparing their base knowledge for their eventual project design. Beginning to talk and learn about “scientific research, the scientific method, how to conduct an experiment, hypothesis, coming up with a scientific question, and how to write methods,” were the first steps in the process according to their teacher, Ms. Rayner. After that, students were paired with a mentor in the science field and were then monitored by that person and Ms. Rayner for the duration of the year.
Considering these are real world experiments, students like Kaviya Chidambaram had to use a lot of trial and error throughout her process. Chidambaram described her project as “an investigation on the impacts of microplastic on exaiptasia diaphana [a sea anemone] growth rates and accumulation.” After her anemones died five different times, she learned how to acclimate them to their tank to finally conduct her experiment.
After getting over that hurdle only two weeks before the science fair, Chidambaram was feeling stressed. Chidambaram explained, “I went into the competition with no data points, like not a single data point because the only time my anemones actually survived long enough for me to feed them plastic for more than one day was about two weeks before the science fair. So that wasn’t enough time for me to conduct a data-driven experiment, so I switched to an observation-based experiment, so I only had observations and my dissection results.”

Best in Show!
With the experiment not going exactly according to plan, Chidambaram still pulled off a 1st place, Best in Show win. She expected to do badly due to having multiple disappointments throughout the process along with multiple changes to her scientific question and the way she answered it. This was a huge shock to Chidambaram and she recalls being “jarred and surprised that [she] won anything, let alone ‘Best in Show.’”

Want in on the Action?
If you’re interested in participating in the science fair or have a love for science, make sure when registering for classes next year that you pick the Science Research Seminar class. “If you really like science and can work independently, then you can take the Science Research Seminar class that will get you to the science fair,” explained Ms. Rayner.
The Science Research Seminar class is unique in its own way. It’s perfect for students who want to facilitate their own learning on their preferred topics at their own pace. In addition, students get to partner with a mentor who is directly in the field of science. Chidambaram stated, “You get to see what science is like first hand and get to be a researcher on your own and really learn how science actually goes. So that was really cool to take on something that I was personally interested in and do it at my own speed and interest.”

Big Congratulations!
Once again, congratulations to Kaviya Chidambaram, Tashi Garret, Emily Kirk, Rachel Stodden, and Anna Decker on all of their hard work leading up to the fair and their amazing projects!