Hewlett High students are JSHS semifinalists

Hewlett High School seniors Rachel Poutre and Alex Tang and juniors Ethan Eisenberg and Blake Lippman from the school’s research program earned semifinalists status in the Junior Science and Humanity Symposium.

All four will present their research at the symposium at York College in Queens on Feb. 9. College faculty and practicing scientists and engineers evaluate the presentations and select the high school students who will represent the New York City Metro and NY Long Island regions at the national symposium.

Eisenberg’s project — “Stability Enhancement of Perovskite Solar Cells Using Mixed Cation/Halide Perovskite” — aims to improve the efficiency and stability of solar panels called perovskites, which breaks down in high humidity. By varying the composition of the added materials, Eisenberg and his teammate, Jack Cox from South Side High School, substantially improved the stability. 

Lippman’s research — Investigating the Use of Ceratopteris richardii as a Model Plant for the Phytoremediation of Cadmium — was developed at Hewlett High. He studied the use of plants to remove the heavy metal cadmium from contaminated soil or water.  Cadmium is a widely used pollutant that is classified as a carcinogen. A high level of cadmium  exposure is associated with many diseases.

He demonstrated that the fern Ceratopteris richardii can survive very high doses of cadmium when treated with melatonin, which significantly reduced the phytotoxicity. He also showed that a mutant strain of the fern with a higher amount of a gene that makes melatonin can survive much higher doses without any pretreatment. Lippman collaborated with Tyler Bissoondial from John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore.

“Do I Spend More When I Feel Less? An Investigation of Social Media’s Impact on Adolescent Propensity to Spend” is Poutre’s research to determine if adolescents’ propensity to spend is influenced by social media, in relation to their desire to be popular and their self-esteem. How likely are adolescents to express their desire to spend money because of social media?

She developed a scale that measures social media’s influence on spending propensity and a scale that measures a desire to be popular. She used the Rosenberg self-esteem scale and surveyed 238 adolescents. Poutre found that they expressed high levels of social media’s influence on spending, a high desire to be popular and high self-esteem.

This can be attributed to the superficial increases in self-esteem they are able to obtain from social media or from the typical impulsive teenage impulsive decisions. Overall, teenagers were likely to buy or consider buying an item after viewing a social media post in which the item was featured. Adolescents were inclined to buy items that were symbols of economic status and post pictures featuring these items.

Tang will present his research — “Validation of High-Order Theories for Sandwich Beam Behavior Using Direct Image Correlation (DIC) Techniques.” He investigated the properties of composite materials called sandwich structures. He created sandwich structures and examined the validity of various theories.

His research demonstrated that there are specific conditions where all current theories break down and cannot predict accurately the behavior of his sandwich structures. New theories must be derived to explain the observations he made.