Students soar in science competition

WESTFALL - Five Delaware Valley High School students earned first-place honors in the recent Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science competition. Ten Delaware Valley students attended the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science State Competition at the Penn State main campus from May 14 to16. Students made ten-minute presentations that explained their long-term projects and results. They received places as follows: Lindsey Anderson, 10th grade, first place, entitled “The Effect of UV Radiation on Butterfly Growth.”; Margarita Polyak, 10th grade, second place, for “What’s The Difference?”; Samantha Mascia, 10th grade, third place, for “Detergent’s Effect on the Growth of Brassica Rapa.”; Georgiy Polyak, 11th grade, first place, presenting “Long, Long Lines.”; Nick Troiano, 11th grade, first place, for “Proving the Rotation of the Earth.”; Skyler Schneider, 11th grade, first place, for “Modular Fractals in Pascal’s Triangle.”; Kaelyn Stadtmueller, 11th grade, second place, entitled “An Exploration of the Doppler Effect.”; Jasper Schneider, 12th grade, won the Perseverance Award for three years of participation at the state level and second place, for “Electron Diffraction and Wave/Particle Duality of Matter.”; and Nicholas DuBee, 12th grade, second place, for “How Accurate are Weather Forecasters?” Kristyn Gumpper, 12th grade, earned first place, a perfect score of 5.0, and received a $100 bond from The Pennsylvania Science Teachers Association (PSTA), for her project entitled “Genetically Modified Food and the Mortality Rate of Flies.” The students competed in the following categories: Lindsey Anderson and Samantha Mascia in Ecology; Georgiy Polyak and Skyler Schneider in Mathematics; Nick Troiano, Kaelyn Stadtmueller and Jasper Schneider in Physics; Kristyn Gumpper in Biology; Margarita Polyak in Chemistry; and Nicholas DuBee in Earth Science. All of the students who participated in the competition are students currently enrolled in the Integrated Math/Science Honors Block Program at Delaware Valley High School. See http://www.pctm.org/honorsmathsci/ for more information on the program.