SPRI Scientists Visit Vail Mountain School, Offer Guidance and Advice on How to Produce Meaningful, Successful Science Fair Projects
Vail Mountain School recently held its annual Science Fair this past week where students in the seventh and eighth grades presented projects on a variety of scientific topics. Each project was judged by a panel of judges who presented awards in each grade based upon Most Original, Most Scientific, Best Display, and Best Overall.
While the science fair is an opportunity for each student to learn about a scientific method that can be applied to each of their own projects, it also created awareness within each student that gave their projects real meaning that allowed them to follow through on the experiments.
Students who participated in the science fair not only received guidance from teachers at Vail Mountain School, but also from real science researchers at the Steadman Philippon Research Institute. SPRI is known worldwide for the research and development of new procedures and techniques in the advancement of orthopedic medicine. A self-selected group of students traveled to the Institute where they had the opportunity to observe how researchers there use the scientific method in their work.
Coen A. Wijdicks, Ph.D., Director of the Biomechanics Research Department and Senior Staff Scientist at SPRI, visited the science fair with two fellows where together, they offered guidance to middle school students and offered advice on how to refine their experiments so that they could yield the most meaningful data.
Similar to real scientific laboratories on the SPRI campus, students who participated in the science fair provided a hypothesis, designed and performed experiments, analyzed the data and drew conclusions. Winners of the Most Scientific and Best Overall prizes in each grade will travel to the Colorado and Wyoming Junior Academy of Science in April where they will compete with over 100 other seventh and eighth grade students.
The Steadman Philippon Research Institute congratulates all of the winners of the Vail Mountain School 2012 Science Fair!