Just like any other year, many students entered their projects into the science fair with hopes to advance to the regional fair. However, this year was very different. This year’s science fair was optional and it was completely virtual. There was also no class time dedicated to working on science fair projects.

My group members and I had to plan everything outside of class without any strict deadlines to help guide us. There were a few challenges that came from having no time in class to work on the science fair project in class and us having to present the project virtually. 

“It was challenging to find a date to get together and conduct our experiment, but we pushed through and persevered,” sophomore group member Armen Boghosian said. 

Our group had to decide when we would get together since we couldn’t do the experiment in school. We ended up getting together over winter break to complete the  experiment part of our project. 

The title of our project was the Effect of the Ratio of Water and Resin on the Quality and Time of Which the Resin Cures. Resin is a material that is used in 3d printing. In our project, we mixed resin and water, and shined a laser on to the mixture to see how fast the mixture would harden. 

 After completing our experiment and collecting all of our data, we weren’t given any other instructions about the next step in the science fair process until a month later, when our teacher told us that we had to submit a youtube video about our experiment to be entered into the fair. Our group got to work on the video a day later.

We all worked together and made a slideshow presentation that included our projects title, hypothesis, procedure, materials, qualitative and quantitative data, and our conclusion. We then recorded ourselves speaking over our slideshow and then uploaded the video to youtube. 

“Completing the project wasn’t too hard because I had two good partners and we divided the work evenly. The work wasn;t tedious because it was fun,” sophomore group member Chelsi Lilli said. 

After submitting this video, our group waited to see if we would advance to the regional fair. Around three weeks after we submitted the video, we got an email saying that our project advanced to the regional fair.

We were allowed to make minor changes to our project before we would partake in the regional science fair.

On March 20th, from 8-10 am, All group members were put in a virtual room where judges would come in and ask us questions about our project. We all had to keep our cameras on and dress in formal attire for the judging. 

“The regional science fair was nerve racking yet interesting,” Boghosian said. 

After the regional judging, we all waited to see where we placed. Around two weeks later, all group members got a letter in the mail and we found out that we placed third in the regional science fair under the chemistry section.

“The process of completing the project was cool because we did a topic that i’ve never worked with before and I learned a lot through our project,” Lilli said.