Student tops in Canada
Grant Mansiere of Summerland secondary won a gold medal at the Canada-Wide Science Fair for project involving aspen trees
On Father’s Day last year, Grant Mansiere and his family were driving through Naramata when a national-award-winning inspiration struck.
As their car snaked along valley roads, it created a breeze that mercifully cut through the still, heavy Okanagan heat. Which is why Mansiere found it odd that once the car stopped, a wall of nearby aspen trees continued to flutter in a non-existent wind.
“It all starts with questions. I looked at these trees and went: ‘Well, what’s going on here? There’s no wind,’” said Mansiere, a Grade 11 student at Summerland Secondary School. “That’s what really started me, and off I went.”
Mansiere’s inquiry eventually took him to the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Regina earlier this month, where his project, Why do Aspens Tremble? Adaptations for Self Cleaning and Pest Control, secured a gold medal in the senior age category and thousands of dollars in entry scholarships to five Canadian universities.
His project examined what allows aspen to prosper, considering the species has what appears to be an inherent flaw.
“I found that trembling aspens, per stand, are genetically identical. So if one gets an infestation or an infection, all of them are going to be susceptible,” he said.
“How can they have this Achilles heel and yet be the largest organism in the world?”
Mansiere looked at the traits of the aspen that might be the source of its hidden immunity. Of the ones he discovered, the two he pursued were the leaves’ fluttering and their hydrophobicity — their ability to bead liquid so it rolls off.
He was able to calculate the force of a single leaf’s swing using a wind tunnel borrowed from school and found the small-scale operation has much larger implications.
“They’re fluttering in the wind and they’re creating a massive amount of turbulence because there’s a bunch of trees per aspen stand,” Mansiere said.
“They’re hampering insects even approaching the tree. Further, with my calculations I found that the leaves had enough force to fling off insects.”
With the infestation side covered, Mansiere turned his attention to infections. His theory, that the water-beading effect helps the tree self-clean, also held up.
“When these water droplets bead and roll off they pick up dirt and mould, so they’re ensuring they’re not getting infected,” he said. “So, (aspens) are almost like this castle that has a moat and cannons.”
The work to uncover these findings involved a lot of help and a little improvisation.
“(On) Christmas, most people are taking a break, but in our house there was water droplet measuring,” said Grant’s mother, Sharon.
“I had to make do with what I had around the house. I didn’t have a laboratory like many kids do at the national fair,” he added.
“The wind tunnel I borrowed, but the rest . . . well, the stand I put inside of it is a paper weight,” he said with a laugh. “It’s got little ducks in it.”
Mansiere turned to Summerland Secondary School science teachers Shona Becker and Raja Gupta to borrow the wind tunnel and to ensure his force calculations were correct.
He borrowed dental-impression material to attempt to get an imprint of a leaf’s surface structure and used an electron microscope at the Summerland Research and Development Centre to take extremely high-definition pictures of it as well.
Mansiere said taking his curiosity and running with it has been the most rewarding part of the experience, as well as being able to go to the fair and meet students from all over the country with a similar passion for discovery.
“It’s the top one per cent of the youth in Canada for science. That’s pretty cool to have them all pooled in one area,” he said. “You walk up and down those halls and it’s amazing what those kids are coming up with.”
Mansiere travelled to Regina with a team of five students from the Central Okanagan and two delegates, and is grateful for all the educators who made the trip possible.
Mansiere is not sure yet what he wants to study after high school, but plans to attend Western University in London, Ont., with the entrance scholarship he was awarded for his gold medal.
His advice for students looking at entering the fair is simple: “To find a topic there’s always a list of different things, things you looked at and went: ‘Hmm, can I make that better? That’s a problem, how can I fix it? What’s going on there?’ Find the question, and then start reading about it, and you’ll find wild things.
“Everything is a science in itself. And so if you look into it you’ll find a science sooner or later that interests you.”