By Moneth G. Deposa
Variety News Staff

OVER a hundred junior high and high school students at Marianas Baptist Academy yesterday competed in the second annual science fair .
There were 34 competing groups, with three members in each group.
Their entries were judged by seven jurors selected from the community.
Lorna B. Liban, MBA science teacher and coordinator of the event, said in an interview that this year’s fair saw the involvement of 103 students.
“We’re very excited to know who will be chosen top winners in both categories — they will be recodnized during the graduation rites in May,” Liban said, adding that this year’s fair yielded more participants that the one last year.
“The science fair last year was limited only to only one category, but since more students joined the event, we split the competition into junior and high school categories and each level will have its own winning group,” she said.
“This fair is very important to our students at MBA as it strengthens their skills especially their scientific thinking, creativity, and clarity in presenting the data and analysis of the results. We’re very proud of our participants — most of the entries are technology-driven this year,” she said, adding that laptops, DVDs, projectors, and computers were used in the demonstrations of the entrants.
The entries of the high school participants were electromagnets and biological organisms; how to make a simple workable seismograph; fractals in meteorology; studies on peroxide bubbles; cars, color and Celsius; texting and comparing consumer products; and flaming cash.
Among the entries of junior high students were research on plastics; carbohydrates: mono, di- and polysaccharides; and how to make a Van De Graaff generator.
According to last year’s science fair champions — Suhyeong Chang, Efrain Peter Camacho and Inyong Chung — all entries deserve to be recognized this year.
Their group’s DNA extraction was named overall winner of the competition last year.
This year’s judging criteria include creativity, scientific thought, clarity and value, utility and presentation of research.
“This year we came up with a study on electromagnetic waves where we placed an electromagnet on animals to see how they reacted. Unfortunately, they didn’t move or do anything and, as a result, we came up with the conclusion that magnetic waves can only be collected in televisions, digital alarm clocks, cell phones and other electronics,” Camacho said.
“The idea here is that you can do something and even though it doesn’t give you the results that you expect, the non-result is still good as a working experiment,” Chung said.