Record participation in South Side High School science fair

The annual Science Fair at South Side High School attracted a large number of participants this year and more than 600 projects were displayed, according to the school’s Science Research coordinator,Herb Weiss.

“Everybody participates,” said Weiss of the event that filled the school’s gym on March 24. “Our English as a Second Language students did a project on tornadoes, and projects ran the gamut from that to one that looked at the genome for nucleotide sequences for pancreatic cancer.”

Among the projects that garnered first place, were two in the Living Environment category: “How do Oil Spills Effect Plant Growth?” by Donald Rock and “How Music Affects the Hatching Rate of Baby Chicks” by Natasha Camarillo. In Chemistry, first place went to Gina Allen’s “How do Differentiating Components React Together to Form the Alternate Types and Properties of Paint?” First place in the Physics category went to Cathryn Ryan, Mark Hamilton and Emily Passaerlli for their project, “How Does the Unequal Weight Distribution Affect the Acceleration of a Cylinder on a Ramp?” In Research I, Samantha Prashad took first place with “A Measurement of Biodiversity: The Effect of Invasive Species in an Agricultural Setting,” and in Research II, Ben Hawriluk’s project “Leveraging Genome-Wide Association Studies: A Novel Pancreatic Cancer Pathway Analysis Through Original and Integrative Multi-variable Algorithm” got top honors.

Weiss said that two organizers — teachers Mariann Vogel and Margaret Rhee — were largely behind the success of the fair. Although certain projects were selected as winners, Weiss said the real highlight of the event was the turnout, and the high level of student involvement.

The following is a complete list of projects that took first, second, third and honorable mention in each of the categories.

Living Environment

Honorable Mention Tie

Ben Richman - Memory and Music

Joel Garcia, Delvis Rameriz, Daquan Johnson, John Manna, Bryan Nesdill - What are the Similarities and Differences Between Hornworms And Caterpillars?

3rd Place Katie Pizzani - The Impact of the BP Oil Spill on the Brown Pelican

2nd Place David Piteo - Alzheimer’s Disease

1st Place Tie