Judging our Regional Science Fair
For the sixth consecutive year, I judged the middle school and high school exhibits in Behavioral Sciences in the Austin Energy Regional Science Festival. I also judged both sections of elementary school entries. As always, it was challenging and fascinating.
Before the show, I walked the event looking for projects with military applications. I found many more than the three that I cited on my blog.
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...
Among those were table-top electrophoresis, a cheap recording and transmitting stethoscope, using a semi-conductor chip to purify water, two about helmet liners, three about rockets, and a field expedient firearm. Two investigated how and why WiFI signals attenuate. Two that could be linked were a mechanical hand (actually, two different projects made hands, one was more sophisticated as a sensor) and another with a robot that could read hand signals.
(You can start here and see the Awards.
http://www.sciencefest.org/awards
The US Navy and USAF both gave special awards all across the fair, as did the Society of Women Engineers, and several other organizations.)
I placed this under "Culture" rather than "Science" or "Education" because I perceive this is an attribute of the general society, whether and to what extend we encourage science in particular and exploration in general.
Before the show, I walked the event looking for projects with military applications. I found many more than the three that I cited on my blog.
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...
Among those were table-top electrophoresis, a cheap recording and transmitting stethoscope, using a semi-conductor chip to purify water, two about helmet liners, three about rockets, and a field expedient firearm. Two investigated how and why WiFI signals attenuate. Two that could be linked were a mechanical hand (actually, two different projects made hands, one was more sophisticated as a sensor) and another with a robot that could read hand signals.
(You can start here and see the Awards.
http://www.sciencefest.org/awards
The US Navy and USAF both gave special awards all across the fair, as did the Society of Women Engineers, and several other organizations.)
I placed this under "Culture" rather than "Science" or "Education" because I perceive this is an attribute of the general society, whether and to what extend we encourage science in particular and exploration in general.
