Two Banff students attended the 53rd annual Canada Wide Science Fair, held in Windsor, Ont. in May.
Grade 9 student Aaron Howe and Grade 7 student John Poole represented Banff with two highly ambitious science projects.
Approximately 500 finalists were selected from over 100 regional science fairs held across the country to present their projects at this week-long event, held May 10-17 at the University of Windsor.
“For my project I compared two different types of dams, a clay dam and a freezable dam. A freezable dam uses a coolant or refrigerant to freeze ground and make it impermeable,” Poole said.
“I tested them in two different ways – first I tested their permeability with other ground materials, then I poured 150 ml of water through and timed how long it would take for the water to come through the other side.”
Poole then took the experiment a step further and utilized an aquarium to continue the research and experiments.
Poole says he thought of the experiment after hearing about the Fukushima Nuclear Plant. “When I was listening to the radio I was intrigued by this concept of a freezable dam that I’d never heard of before,so I wanted to test it with a dam I was more familiar with,” Poole said.
Howe’s project is called Monitor Me, and the idea behind it was to build a device around a Raspberry Pi (a small computer module about the size of a credit card) and attach multiple sensors to monitor heart rate, GPS and temperature.
“The idea is you wear it and it gathers all this information and sends it to the Internet where it can be viewed in real time,” Howe said. “It can map out your location, your heart rate and temperature and you can monitor all that in real time or go back and look at past records.
“What’s important is if the device detects that your heart rate is getting too high or too low or the temperature drops, it sends an emergency email, text message or calls someone – it responds to the emergency situation automatically, so you don’t have to press a button or call for help, it does that for you.”
Howe’s invention earned him a bronze medal, and both students say they are going to carry on in the field of science experimentation over the next year.
