“It’s like science fair on IB steroids,” senior Jenna Balicki said. For IB Science students, Group 4 is the equivalent to the Science Fair. However, the students are expected go into more depth about real world applications and understand the scientific method. The IB website states that Group 4 is supposed to help students further “explore the concepts, theories, models and techniques that underpin each subject area and through these develop their understanding of the scientific method.” The Group 4 projects at AHS were finished on Friday, Nov. 12.

Group 4 is a collaboration between students from different science disciplines. This includes students from the IB classes of Chemistry, Biology, Physics and Design Tech. This year certain aspects of Group 4 were changed. The groups were assigned by teachers, instead of being chosen by the students and approved by the teachers. The groups consisted of three to four students.

This year the Group 4 topic was “Managing an environmental disaster”. Groups researched topics, like atomic bombs, tsunamis and other natural disasters, oil spills and toxic waste runoff. The final product of Group 4 is a poster board, filled with information, research and visuals. Students can get as creative as they want on their posters, as long as they have all the requirements. Participants must also submit a log sheet that tracked “collaboration time, methods, and research progress” and a self reflection to be submitted after their panel presentation.

In addition, this year the participants did not have to complete an experiment. The project was focused on research and real life application. Many students were happy for the change like junior Eliad Gebrehiwot who was “glad we didn’t have to do an experiment.” Others who were looking forward to doing an experiment were disappointed.

The students presented their project in Clausen Hall on Nov. 11 – 12 to four science teachers and IB administrators that judged their project. The students had a substantially less amount of time to complete their project than Science Fair participants usually do.

While presenting their projects, students were judged by either panel A or panel B. The students were randomly split up half and half. The four teachers that judged included physics teacher Thomas Chorman, biology teachers Claudia Lemus and Francesca Mast, and chemistry teacher Isaac Boakye. Design tech teacher Russell Youmans and chemistry teacher Sara Hubbart also participated in Group 4.

The teachers were looking for a complete and correct board that presented the information in a pleasing way, an air of preparedness by the students and a substantial knowledge about their topic. Each presentation was a total of ten minutes long. The first five consists of the students actual presentation and the last five is when the judges pepper the students with questions about their topic. Students are expected to be able to answer the questions with complete thoughts and accurate information.

“I thought the presentations were awesome, it showed a lot of hard work on behalf of the students and they represented Annandale well,” IB Coordinator Shirley Campbell said.