By Jesika Henson
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On April 1 and 2, students around the island competed at the 26th annual Hawaii State Science and Engineering Fair (HSSEF) held at the Hawaii Convention Center.
“Every year is different, every year is a unique experience,” said Central Oahu District Science and Engineering Fair Coordinator Nel Venzon, “To see them become all successful during the whole process, to me, was an affirmation of the teacher’s contribution, it was an affirmation of their passion, their enthusiasm, their engagement in science, it’s just nice to see them succeed in that aspect of education, in science fair.”
This year’s featured projects were those that could be beneficial to the student’s community as a whole. “My project was the effect of color on memorization,” said Junior Mason Lautzenheiser, who placed first in the Behavioral Sciences category, “It has the potential to help students better prepare for tests, which in the long run could lead to better grades, smarter people, better jobs (and a) better community.”
This year’s fair showcased many complex projects from a variety of students from different grade levels. “My project this year was engineering a novel autonomous wheelchair system for visually-impaired and quadriplegic individuals,” said Junior Brandon Kinard, who placed fifth overall. “Essentially, I motorized a wheelchair and programmed it to go from point A to point B via turn-by-turn instructions received by Google Maps (Application Programming Interface). Additionally, the system was designed to enter crosswalks safely, detect traffic signals and act accordingly so that (it will) cross on green and stop on red, align itself with the sidewalk and detect objects in front of the system and navigate around them.”
Every year, the projects are unique and the competition becomes stiff. “This year, I was very impressed by the quality of the projects at a young age,” said Venzon, “A lot of middle school projects are actually doing projects that are high school level or maybe college level for some of them and a lot of the high school student projects were doing graduate school kind of projects, advanced projects and I think partly because those students worked really hard, you can tell they’re very passionate.”
Receiving a prize is not the only thing that students come out of this experience with. “It’s very rewarding to be acknowledged for my work and I feel that my hard work, drive to succeed and prior experiences all helped me place where I did,” said Kinard, “Additionally, having a novel idea, being able to present very well and practice all aided me in effectively conveying the point of my project to the judges which made it stand out.” Lautzenheiser added, “It was a huge surprise (to have placed), but it made me feel great, because then I knew all my hard work paid off. I think (that) both my statistical analyses and my social skills when talking to the judges helped my project (to) stand out (and) even though it was my first time I wasn’t nervous at all, I just had fun.”
Both Kinard and Lautzenheiser plan on competing in the Science Fair next school year, while Venzon will step down from his position as School Science Fair Coordinator and focus on his district position.
