The Greater Vancouver Regional Science Fair experience

 

The Greater Vancouver Regional Science Fair

Hello again. So recently, I got into the Greater Vancouver Regional Science Fair or the GVRSF. I trust that you know where Vancouver is located and what a science fair is. If not, then there’s a reason. Anyhow, the whole thing was 3 days long and there was a lot of talking as you might expect. But we need to run that back, back 6 weeks ago when the science fair at my school happened.

As a final test/exam in science, we need to make a project based on a question we came up with. I was partnered with my friend, Ethan, and together we come up a question. The requirement is that the question has to be answered using scientific research and it has to be related to science. So we got to work. The first part is to think of a question. I know that there are websites that give great suggestions for topics to do science fair on but I’ll say that 95% of those ideas are used at least once before. Also we wanted something original, a question that no one has answered before. So what I do? Well, it seems that the only logical thing to do is to team up with a fellow plane enthusiast and keep going from there. So I got with my friend Ethan. Ethan will be my partner for the next month and a half in Science. Then we set to decide what question to do. There was a lot of suggestions. I suggest we do one about plane’s fuel efficiencies, and Ethan suggest we do one about planes’ aerodynamics. Finally, we settle on wing’s aerodynamics and decide to build a wind tunnel. How it’s going to go is we’re going to build a wind tunnel, put a replica model of a plane wing in their, get some dry ice smoke going and let it flies through the plane’s wing, and then we’ll measure the turbulence thus letting us find the right angle to land a plane safely, fuel efficiently. So now it’s just a matter of designing the wind tunnel and testing.

Fast forward 2 weeks, and the wind tunnel is done. So how the wind tunnel was built goes something like this. 4 piece of glasses glued together like a box, a square hole approximately 20 cm * 20 cm were cut in the back for the plane wing to go in. An aluminum connects to the top of the box to let the smoke comes in. Approximately 400 straws were cut in pieces and put on both end of the box to let air circulate. A bottle placed at the back to make the smoke mixture that also connected by the aluminum tubes going in to the box. Several other small aluminum tubes were created and spaced evenly across the already presented tube going into the box. We then added batteries to led lights and fans on the left side of the box for simulating airflow. Connect the batteries and wires of the fans to a designated control panel on the box. Then a small fan was attached near the bottom of the water bottle to blow the air through the tube. Then for the plane, we took a piece of wood, sanded it down to the shape of an airplane’s wing, then painted it and attached it to a piece of cardboard that would then be placed through the 20 cm by 20 cm hole. We then take a part of the RC Car that let the controller control it and attached it to the wing’s flaps and so we can control it and move it up and down using the controller. After all that done, we need to somehow make the smoke. To do that, we used dry ice and hot water, when those two combines together, they created smoke and that smoke are clouds. Those mixtures would be done inside the bottle and then the clouds would be blow right into the tube and out the tubes connect. The final product looks something like this.

The wind tunnel, there are literally no other pictures in my camera as they all corrupted themselves into blank pictures, this is the only one left

So on the day of the science fair at my school, it was pretty boring, not much happened and generally, we were just standing around doing nothing. Now, you can sign up for the regional science fair and participate, so Ethan asked me to join, I said sure and then we go asked the teacher that’s how we joined the regional science fair. The sign up process goes something like this.

1.    Go to their website

2.    Find register

3.    Sign up

4.    Create a specific account

5.    Sign a bunch of forms

6.    Wait for confirmation

7.    Profit

And if all of that goes well, congratulation, you’re accepted. And so we did and we waited multiple days until an email was sent to us saying that we got in and that the science fair start in a month. Before we move on, it’s worth noting that the regional science fair will be taking place in the University of British Columbia. So it will be my second time being there if I join this science fair.

Fast forward a bit more to the day of the science fair, the whole thing will be taking place over the course of 3 days, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. In which, participants would be there for a whole 23 Hours, 9 on Thursday, 8 on Friday and 6 on Saturday. A lot of talking. So, how much people are in? Well, my school got about 14 people, one of them is Matthew, my friend. Let me tell you, that man’s a genius. He made algorithm to crack password, bypass RSA encryption and generally very talented with coding. Meanwhile, I am very good at almost nothing.

On the first day, we are told to bring our project into a big hall, the Great Hall they call it. There were around 14 rows or so and they are all arranged so that each row consist of 2 tables * 20 tables. There were also tables arranged along the walls wrapping the entire great hall. We then put our projects there and go down the atrium to get the welcoming from the organizer, the UBC administrator and other people. There are approximately 250 participants from around 40 schools or so. Again, I don’t keep count, they do so I don’t know the exact numbers. After the welcoming messages from the head of the committees that set this all up and some really cool dude named Kenzo.

Atrium

How it is setup

Anyway, how it is going to go is:

We will get a number of judges to visit our project and rate it. It can vary from 2 judges to 6. Each of them are going to stay there, let us do the presentation and ask us questions. Each session can last 5 minutes to half an hour and each time we wait for them to come can last 30 to 45 minutes. I think you know how this is going to go. The chief judge told us that if after an hour and nobody comes, we need to tell him. At 2 PM, everyone is at their project and ready to go. Comes the first of many judges. Me and Ethan waited for about 40 minutes and we got our first judge. We show her how the wind tunnel work and demonstrate it. I forgot to tell you how we got the dry ice, we stole it from a restaurant. Anyhow, the first session lasted about 15 minutes. And for the first 3 hours of doing that, we got 6 judges. The second and third judges was not that interesting, but the fourth judge was very interested in our project. He was so amazed, he asked permission for a picture, of course we let him. After 3 hours of nonstop talking, we are allowed to leave and eat dinner. The whole thing was supposed to last until 9 PM. During the time there, I’ve made some friends. A guy named Paul and another guy named Simon or something like that, they were to the right of us. I also forgot to mention that our project was at the top left corner of the fourth row. So we basically have 1 direct neighbour to the left, 1 directly across, 1 to the far right, 2 diagonally from us. They were really nice and funny people and we talked a lot. Their project was about getting electricity out of algae.

One of many projects

At dinner, you can either go out to get things from the nearby shops, or eat inside the AMS student nest which we are in currently. After an hour of dinner, we are back for another 3 hours’ worth of nonstop talking to people. There was a lot of talking and my head kind of zone out at around 7:30 PM. Then a surprise announcement came. We are dismissed early at 8:30 PM. Only one more hour to go. Then I realize that I can walk around and so I did and found a lot of interesting project. One of them has 2 poster stacked on top of each other with a lot of words on it. I’m saying like 25 pages’ worth of words on them. The project was about plants. Another one that has no poster but a screen and a projector. Who needs poster when screen exist am I right? Anyway, a lot of insane project, someone built a prosthetic leg, someone else made something about bicycles and wheels. A lot of smart people here. Anyway, at 8:30 PM, we were finally dismissed to go home. After approximately 6 hours of nonstop talking, it was finally done.

On day 2, we are to be there at 8 PM for tours around the campus. I am in the tour to the Engineer Building where all the engineer work. There were two people there, and they aren’t even Engineers but Biodiversity Scientists. But they work with Engineers so that counts. What are we even doing there? Well, visit the place and do an activity that I believe to be the most entertaining part of the entire science fair. Making shelves out of cardboard. And we are split into teams of 3, so I got a guy, I think his name was Richard and another guy named John or something. = You might think, well that’s easy just take some tape and put it all together. Well you fool, you can’t use tape or glue. You have to use what they provided to you, cardboards, popsicle sticks, pins and strings. The requirement is that it has to hold a bottle of corn syrup. And let me tell you, corn syrups are heavy and dense. Anyway, we have an hour to come up with a design and finally weigh it with the bottles. Anyway after 45 minutes, here’s the design.

Shelves

Looks unstable, yes. Unstable, yes. Possibly the most unstable thing the world will ever witness. But it worked even better than we intended. Which was very, very surprising. Anyway, it held up 2 bottles of corn syrup before collapsing, people say bad design, I say worked better than we thought it did. Anyhow, some other group held up 6 bottles. Which was impressive I guess.

After that, we are to return to the great hall and talk to even more people. From 9 to 12 which is 3 hours of talking until we are dismissed at 1:45. I visited some of my friends’ station, and they aren’t doing too bad on their own. We got a guy that actually knows how to fly a plane, and then visiting schools start visiting the science fair. At 12, we went to get lunch and then start eating lunch. Then we are back at talking and then dismissed to be back at our school. It was very tiring as we have a science fair, and then my last class is Science. Amazing, double the amount of knowledge.

And on the Third day, the lord said, let there be families. And so it was a free for all public visiting day, but we still have to be there from 9 AM to 3 PM. A lot more talking, yay. But today is also the last day of the fair, which mean there are the grand prizes and more. At 1 PM, we piled into the Atrium for the prize. My friend Matthew got Honorable Mention which I need to remind you that not everyone got a prize so this is very good. My other friend, Audrey got Bronze Medal and then. Finally, we got Silver Medal. Good enough. Some people got ticket to go to the National Science Fair which is cool. After all that, all the hard work, we got Silver Medal. Over the span of a month and a half, 23 hours’ worth of talking, and so much more. We got Silver Medal. I guess the main thing isn’t the prize but the great time we had. Maybe the real prizes were the friends we made along the way. You know what I mean? Something like that, ok this is over.

Worth it