(From left) The Hopkinton High School team of Dylan Streak, Disha Mudenur and Riley Blair won the State Science Fair on May 5th.
Hopkinton High School sophomores Dylan Strike and juniors Riley Blair and Disha Mudenur went camping in Nova Scotia last summer and woke up in front of the ocean to a beautiful sunrise.
“We were so used to the environment in Hopkinton and Boston that we didn’t realize how beautiful nature really was until that trip,” Streak recalls. The trio noticed environmental differences, especially the excess carbon dioxide in the water.
This discovery was the basis for a science fair project titled “Electroextraction of Dawsonite from Marine Water: Efficient Recovery of Seawater Minerals by Electrolysis”, which won 1st place at the school event and 2nd place at the March regional fair. I got the rank.
These results qualified us for a state-level exhibition on May 5th at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where we won first place and received a special Pauline Lamarche Award for Outstanding Design. bottom.
The win qualifies them to compete at the International Science Fair in Dallas May 15-19.
Friends from sixth grade Strike and other students wanted to help restore Boston’s waters and were interested in learning about ocean acidification and its effects.
“It became really important for us to solve this problem together,” Streak said.
Strike explained that the science fair project involves developing a method to extract carbon dioxide from the ocean using the natural mineral dawsonite.
Streak said the main criteria for the experiment were to ensure that enough dawsonite was extracted from the ocean while minimizing pH changes.
“Changes in pH are a big part of the criteria for our project,” the student said, because the different methods tested so far point to rapid death of wildlife around key plants. We wanted the environment not to be adversely affected by our design.”
After completing the research period, the team conducted more than 140 experiments over an eight-month period, each lasting at least 10 minutes and compiled in eight well-documented notebooks. This process also included researching different ways to display the data, which were collected in Excel.
Strike said the experience taught him good teamwork.
“We did different kinds of experiments and used a lot of great scientific equipment, but it was all new to us,” Streak said.
While the students considered science to be the best part of the experience, they also enjoyed presenting to the judges, appreciated their interest, and learned more about careers in science.
Strike said the team was initially intimidated by the “complex-sounding names” of prestigious schools that the project and competitors graduated from.
“But we still presented what we did with confidence. If there is hard work, it will show up,” he said.
In addition to being good at science and presentation, Striek believes teammates having fun with each other cemented winning projects.
“We’ve spent hundreds of hours together doing this, and if we didn’t know how to enjoy each other’s company, we wouldn’t be as successful as we are,” Streak added.
Other Hopkinton Award winners at the State Fair include:
“Using hypermagnesemia to understand the effects of neuromuscular blocking agents on C. elegans nematodes: A safe and novel automated model for paralytic drug testing,” by Srilakshmi Venkatesan, 3rd place. “Chlorella vulgaris as a model for the use of photobioreactors in industrial carbon removal” by Juliet Findren, honorable mention.
Honorable Mention: The Mass Life Sciences – Trailblazer Award for Innovation in Life Sciences was awarded to Necalli Vela-Garcia, Surya Raja-Amudhan and Nithu Sridharan for “PFAS Pollution and Its Effects on Daphnia: Impacts on the Environment and Human Health.” It was impact.
Five HHS teams qualified for the regional competition, four of which finished in the top 15 and qualified for the state competition.
Teams Striek, Blair and Mudenur took second place, while three HHS players took third place awards. Sahithi Pogula, “In Silico SALL4 Oncogene Overexpression Correlation to Non-coding RNA Post-Transcriptional Control and Epigenetic Control,” Srilakshmi Venkatesan, “Using Hypermagnesemia to Understand the Effects of Neuromuscular Blockers on C. elegans : A Safe New Automated Model for Paralytic Drug Testing”, by Juliet Findlen, “Chlorella vulgaris as a model for photobioreactor use in industrial carbon removal”.
Additionally, the team of Briana Mallouh, Tomo Oga, and Avani Daga received an Honorable Mention for “Contamination Level Prediction for Next Time Step Using a Custom Recurrent Neural Network”.
Kristen Murphy, the program’s teacher and director since 2017, said Hopkinton has consistently been one of the top schools in the region and has grown to be one of the largest programs in the state. .
Over the last three years, HHS teams have qualified for international competitions, which she said is “unprecedented for a public school in Massachusetts.”
Murphy said he has 110 students working on the project this year and is most proud of the growing student participation.
“Even if our students don’t win awards, we see a tremendous amount of learning and growth,” Murphy said. “I think it’s a great opportunity for students to challenge themselves and learn a lot about perseverance.”
The program is a hybrid of classes and clubs, an optional enrichment activity open to all high school students who wish to learn research methods and explore topics of interest.
Murphy said the HPTO provides grants to help purchase the materials needed for all projects so that students can participate for free.
Next year, the school will conduct an advanced research elective seminar for 10th graders. Murphy said the class includes participation by members of the professional community each week. She urged anyone in town who would like to speak to her class about scientific research and application to contact her.
Murphy added, “Ask questions, plan, troubleshoot when things go wrong, work as a team, and teach others about a topic. are some of the most important skills students need.”
