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Mid-Ohio Valley students compete at Regional Science Fair

By Douglass Huxley 4 min read

VIENNA -- Fifty-one projects by 64 students from five counties were on display Friday at the Grand Pointe Conference Center for the Regional Science and Engineering Fair.

One of those projects was "How Soil Affects Plant Growth!" by Milea Miihlbach, a seventh-grader from Ravenswood Middle School.

"It really opened my eyes to how nutrients affect plants and how they grow," Miihlbach said. "I'm really going to focus on how I fertilize my soil now."

Miihlbach conducted an experiment to test how yellow squash plants grow in different soil types. She hypothesized that potting soil would be best for growing the plants in pots. However, the results showed that the plants grew faster and healthier in topsoil collected from the student's garden. The topsoil produced 5cm of growth over three weeks, while the potting soil only resulted in 1.5cm of growth.

Miihlbach said her father is an agriculture teacher and he was a big influence on her project.

"He has really taught me a lot as I have gotten older," Miihlbach said. "And he's really told me how nutrients can affect how plants do and even how it can affect how the animals that you feed it to grow."

She said the nutrients already present in topsoil from decomposing plants and animal waste, like her garden, supported better growth. She said she would like to add additional experiments to test other soil types like clay or sand. Other factors that can influence plant growth, like weather, soil properties, and climate, also needed to be examined, she said.

"There's so much that goes into just how plants grow, it's really interesting to me," Miihlbach said.

Ainslie Koreski, an Edison Middle School seventh-grader, asked if the length of a string affects the number of swings of a pendulum in one minute.

Koreski cut three strings into lengths of 16cm, 26cm and 36cm and then dropped them from an angle of 45 degrees with a washer on the ends to see how many swings each could do in a minute. She concluded the longer string swung 87 times, the middle length string swung 70 times and the smallest clocked in at 52 swings.

"I was really surprised by the gap difference," Koreski said.

She said this kind of experiment was important for engineering and science jobs and that she enjoys public speaking. She has wanted to become a lawyer since she was young and enjoys debating different opinions and ideas.

"We used to do debates in elementary school where they give two kids each their own side of the debate and they'd have to debate against the other in front of the class,and I love them because they're so fun," Koreski said. "I just love debating and talking to people about different opinions and ideas, and going against each other for it. I just think it's so interesting to see both sides of a situation."

Ripley High School students Easton Haile and Jayden Goosman did their project on "The Study of the Impact of Weight and Spine on the Velocity." The project looked at the kinetic energy of arrows and how factors like the arrow's spine affect its ability to fly.

"The main focus of the experiment was the spine," Goosman said. "The spine of the arrows, the flex that it has, all arrows flex. It's called the archers paradox."

Haile and Goosman said they were both avid hunters. They said this experiment was important because the arrow's spine affects its ability to humanely kill animals like deer during hunting.

"If you don't have enough kinetic energy when you're shooting an arrow, it won't go all the way through or it won't go enough to penetrate and make an ethical kill," Haile said. "So, you got to have enough kinetic energy."

The pair said hunting for them isn't just about the kill. They both see hunting and managing deer populations as important for both sustaining the animals, and providing food for local communities through meat donations. They also said patience and preparation are key aspects of the sport and that they view bow hunting as a way to spend time in nature and find peace.

"It's about going out there and spending time in nature," Haile said.

Goosman said it was his escape from daily stresses.

"Just sitting out there and letting the birds chirp, and everything just happens around me," Goosman said.

Douglass Huxley can be reached at dhuxley@newsandsentinel.com

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