The regional Illinois Junior Academy of Science Fair project session was held on Saturday, Mar. 8 at Niles North, where over 600 projects were presented to a large team of math and science teachers, sponsors, and experts.
This annual science fair is held to showcase the talent of many young math and science students from different high schools and middle schools who have a passion for research. The students work on their specific projects throughout the year in their classes individually, or in pairs, to construct a hypothetical research concept. Students conduct experiments and write papers on their individual research assignments, which are sent to judges in Feb. During a paper session, many students also present their projects to judges. The major judging takes place during the actual science fair, where the students are told whether they have received gold, which would mean their advancement to state.
“I think I did pretty well. My judges were pretty nice and they knew a lot about chemistry,” senior Sebastian Chirayil said. “Coming to the science fair for the third year, I wasn’t as nervous as I was my first year. I think I have a good chance of making it to state and I think I’ll do well because I’ve been working on this project for three years now.”
While all the students gathered inside the fieldhouse with their poster boards ready to inform judges about their projects, the judges situated themselves in separate rooms. In these rooms, the judges worked for long minutes scoring each of the projects, and deciding whether the student would advance to state, or just receive a silver, bronze, or participatory award. Runners, the student volunteers acting as pathways from the judges to the judging room, frantically made sure all score sheets had been delivered.
“I hope we just get a good final score,” junior Theo Beck said. “We’re going for gold so we’ll see if we can do that. I don’t know if we’ll make it to state though. We have to stay positive- we’re going to try to make it.”
The hustle and bustle of the science fair contains an excited environment where passionate students try their best to present the research they had been working on so diligently for so many months.
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Fatima Farha contributed to this article.
