On the night of April 30, rain poured down on Evesham, but not even darkened skies and flooded roads could stop the students at Beeler Elementary School from having their 2014 Beeler Elementary Science Fair.
The annual event drew dozens of students from kindergarten through fifth grade into Beeler’s all purpose room to set up their poster boards, lay out their experiments and eagerly explain their work to passing students, families and faculty.
Stacey Gruber, a 7-year-old in first grade, did her experiment on finding out how chicks breathe inside their eggshells.
Her first step was taking some eggs and putting them in water mixed with food coloring. When she took the eggs out and cracked them open, she found tiny blue spots inside the eggs.
“I expected that to happen,” Gruber said. “My hypothesis was that there were tiny holes in the egg too small to be seen and that’s how a chick breathes.”
Gruber said she and her dad decided on the project together, and he’s also where her love of science comes from.
“My daddy has a job that involves a lot of science so I get my love of science from him,” Gruber said. “I’m also really, really smart so I just know a lot about science.”
Gruber’s father Matt, an engineer, said through his work they try to reach out to children to get them more interested in science at a young age so as they grow they’ll start to fill the many sciences jobs that are currently empty.
He said it’s great that Beeler holds its science fair to do the same thing.
“I think it’s tremendous that they support it because kids, they’re so focused on reading and math, that at this age they can spark their interest in the sciences too,” Matt said.
Gruber’s first-grade teacher Beth McLaughlin was at the event handing out medals and certificates for competing. She said the level of parental support for this year’s event seemed especially high.
“It ebbs and it flows, but it seems this year people are really interested,” McLaughlin said. “It also looks like a lot of extra effort was put into the projects, a lot of parental support I would say. It’s such a rainy night that I think it’s amazing that people are just coming out to attend.”
McLaughlin said the school has been hosting the fair since she started teaching there, and she’s watched as new technologies have changed the kinds of experiments kids do.
“We’ve done it every year I’ve been here, and I’ve been here for 25 years,” McLaughlin said. “This year, I see a lot of new ideas. I think the Internet and technology is really stepping it up a little bit.”
One such young scientist was kindergartener Keane Black. At 6 years old, Black did his experiment on chemical reactions. Using a chemist app on his computer tablet, he was able to safely mix different chemicals and elements from the periodic table and predict what would happen.
As people passed by, Black mixed the virtual chemicals, sometimes resulting in surprising events such as the virtual beaker shattering.
“It explodes,” Black said. “When two chemicals react together, sometimes they make an explosion.”
Black’s mother Kristina said her son loves science and wants to be a scientist when he grows up, so her husband looks for science- related activities for their son.
“It was all my husband and him,” Kristina said. “They like to see what kind of elements would blow stuff up. It’s a great app because you can just safely add elements. You can light a match, do all that, but safely.”
