Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Science fair draws crowd to UA
245 students from NW region participate in 73rd annual event
FAYETTEVILLE — The science projects ranged from whether humans can recognize text written by an artificial intelligence chatbot to seeing if the most expensive golf balls roll farther than cheaper ones.
The answer to both was yes, according to two of the student studies on display at the 73rd annual Northwest Arkansas Regional Science and Engineering Fair at the University of Arkansas on Friday.
Shawn Bell, director of the UA’s Center for Mathematics and Science Education and coordinator of the fair, said 245 students in grades 5-12 participated, and there were 199 projects for judges to consider.
“All the projects were awesome,” Bell told the crowd gathered for the awards ceremony at the Student Union Ballroom. “I think it gets better every year.”
The fair aims to endorse STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) literacy and increase STEM career awareness in Northwest Arkansas for students and teachers through inquiry, research and project-based learning as well as encouraging students to pursue STEM disciplines, according to a university news release.
“To the students, congratulations on being here today,” Kim Needy, dean of the College of Engineering, said at the ceremony. “I am so proud of you. You’re all winners.”
Needy said she hoped fair participants would stick with STEM because it’s wonderful.
Students competed in 17 categories, including animal sciences, molecular biology, computer science, engineering, environmental management and physics, according to the news release.
Jack Snell, an 11th-grader at Alma High School, finished second in the engineering: materials/bioengineering
category. He developed a program that interprets speech from a microphone into Braille characters on an LED dot matrix screen, Snell said.
“If I speak into the device, it will flash up on a little screen each Braille character of each letter that you’re speaking,” Snell said.
He used an LED dot matrix screen because actual Braille displays are very expensive, Snell said.
“I’m proud of it,” he said, adding he thinks the project could lead to further research and “maybe actual application in some kind of device.”
Jerry Kelley, a science teacher at Alma High School, taught Snell when he was a freshman. Kelley said Snell has been versatile over the years, from focusing on artificial intelligence to computer science and now the speechto-Braille project.
“Jack’s an extremely talented kid,” Kelley said. “He’s going to do great things.”
Kelley said the fair is about more than finishing first, second or third.
“The experience, the presenting and sharing their research is really important,” Kelley said. “I think a lot of it is also networking. These are kids that get to meet other kids from other schools that they might not normally meet. That networking creates an opportunity for them to maybe, in the future, be able to work together and stay in contact with each other.”
The senior division category winners in the fair advance to the state Science and Engineering Fair at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway on March 30-31. The overall senior division winners and their teachers will be sponsored for the International Science and Engineering Fair in Los Angeles in May, according to the release.