On Tuesday and Wednesday, March 29 and 30, four Island Pacific Academy (IPA) students (with three projects) competed at the 59th annual Hawai’i State Science & Engineering Fair held at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu. To compete in this fair students conduct scientific research, prepare a display board explaining the research, and present their findings to individual scientists, community groups and related organizations at the annual fair. Competition begins at the school level where advancement of selected projects move on to District Fairs. A percentage of selected projects at District are given the opportunity to compete for cash, scholarships and other awards at the State Science Fair where the top 5 projects are selected to represent the State of Hawaii at the International Science & Engineering Fair (ISEF) held in May of each year.
At each level of competition, IPA’s students had the opportunity to revise their projects to thoroughly answer any questions and to incorporate the advice of previous judges. IPA’s Meta Bradley (grade 6), Ian Kam (grade 7), Devyn Manuel (grade 8) and Gabriella Lum (grade 8) advanced to the state competition ready to present their projects. The projects are rated based on their written presentations and display boards as well as interviews conducted with the student participants. Meta Bradley’s project “What’s That Floating in the Water?”, a study into zooplankton and phytoplankton won 3rd place overall in the category of Microbiology. Ian Kam’s project, “Waste to Watts” about making electricity from waste won 2nd place in the category of Energy: Chemical, plus two monetary awards including $100 from C4 Management and $75 from the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.
“I was very proud of our students and how they presented at the Hawai’i State Science & Engineering Fair,” remarked Michelle Bradley, IPA Science Department Chair. “They represented Island Pacific Academy well and impressed the judges with their projects. Two of our projects took top honors overall in their Junior Research categories which shows how well our students do when compared to other 6th-8th grade students in our entire state!”
Congratulations to our students! Go Navigators!
Meta Bradley (’22) is all smiles after winning 3rd place in the category of Microbiology
Ian Kam (’21) presents his project “Waste to Watts” for which he won 2nd place in the category of Energy: Chemical
Devyn Manuel (’20) and Gabrielle Lum (’20) show off their project “Mice Maze” looked at the influence of genetics on how mice can navigate a maze.