“It is the most wonderful time of the year….” Andy Williams

It’s my favorite time of the year-Science Fair Season!!!

This year, I got to be a science fair judge for San Francisco County’s Middle School Science Fair. I was a judge (on a team of three) for most of the physical science entries.

On the first night, you judge the exhibits. In order to make everything fair, the student’s name and school is hidden from the judges. On the second night, you interview the students-and I made sure that I asked each student where he or she went to school.

This year, we interviewed 11 students for 10 entries (one entry had a team of two students). The students came from six private schools and two public schools (James Lick and AP Giannini). Only two of the entries were submitted by female scholars.

The entries were on tidal energy, hydrogen made from salt solutions (experiments done by Dad due to the explosion factor), rock climbing, bouncing balls, wind turbines, variables of speed and weight on skateboards (his brother helped), breakability of cement and durability of eggs.

Some of the students practically glowed when they talked about their project. One student from a private school talked about how he had gotten help from the guys at Radio Shack. Then he got pointers from the guys at the Hobby Shop. And he even took pointers from his older sister. And each time that he got a different answer than the hypothesis, he took the next step to found out why. His secret-”I started early.”

We had one student who created a lovely exhibit with very nice photos-but when he spoke, it was obviously that it was Dad who was interested in the project and the student was interested in the photography aspect.

But the kicker was that we had one exhibit from a private school eighth grade student who was at a class trip in Paris. (Yes-as in Paris, France.) When the Randall Museum called his home the night before to tell him that he was a finalist, his mother in San Francisco and his teacher/chaperone in Paris arranged for us to talk to him via the phone at 9 p.m. San Francisco time/6 a.m. Paris time. Not only was this a motivated student-but he had a pretty good group of supporters around him.

While it is always wonderful to be a part of the science fair, I am always disappointed in the number of entries from public schools that make it to the final round. This year’s public school entries were similiar to other public school entries that I have seen in the other five years that I have judged-public school entrants don’t tend to do as many trial runs and they don’t appear to understand the need to control variables (like temperature or time).

A reason for this lack of depth in science is that currently, science is not a subject that is on one of the standardized tests. So the emphasis has been on the subjects that the students test for (English and math) rather than other subjects that help to create a well-balanced scholar.

But I applaud each and every teacher who makes that special effort to get their students into the science fair. (As well as each and every parent who finds the supplies, finds the time and deals with the endless requests of their budding scientist)

We may have only given out one first prize to each category for each grade. But in the end, all of us are winners-the students who entered the contest and we as a community who now have future scientists.