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Dymond, Bomkamp grand award winners at science fair
Friday, April 3, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by Emily BARNES
David Knies, left, of Marbury and his daughter, Samantha Knies, 13, and eighth-grader at General Smallwood Middle School, look at other science projects after Samantha set hers up, at the Charles County Science Fair held at North Point High School.
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For the past 50 years students in Charles County have been testing hypotheses and analyzing data for the county science fair.
This year more than 600 elementary, middle and high school students brought their projects to North Point High School for the opportunity to be named the grand winner of the 50th annual Charles County Science Fair and move on to the international science fair later this year.
This year the winning nods went to Cayley Dymond, 13, and Katherine Bomkamp, 17. Both students at North Point as the grand award winners. Cayley's project was "The Dependence of GPS Accuracy on Ionospheric Electron Density" and Katherine's project was "Pain Free Socket."
Students from area public and private schools dropped off projects last week for judging early Saturday.
"It's fun to learn different things," said Taylor Dye, 11, of Dr. James Craik Elementary School about doing science projects.
This was the first county science fair for Taylor. Her project explored the world of salts and which particular kind of salt would melt ice quicker.
Taylor said she got the idea from the snowstorms the county had over the winter.
Taylor proved through her project that rock salt works the fastest.
Taylor and other students proved that every day things can be turned into science projects such as Asha Fola-Whigham's project called "Panic at the Picnic" in which Asha discovered which detergent was best for particular stains.
Each project had subtly different methods and hypotheses, though some seemed very close in conception, as with a project that asked whether a weighted bat would produce more home runs, and another that looked at the baseball as the source of more hits.
The fair had three age categories, for elementary, middle and high schoolers, and a multitude of science categories, from animal science to plant sciences.
Melissa Reen of La Plata High School won first place in the senior level animal science category of the fair. Reen said she has been working on the same project for several years now. The project started when Melissa was in middle school and saw an Opossum in her yard at home. The sighting sparked her curiosity to learn more about the various creatures that come into her yard, both mammals and avians.
Melissa observed the animals and carefully documented the surrounding area including the conditions of weather, time of day and so forth.
Over the years Melissa has incorporated different variables to her observations. This year she said she tested soils to see if the conditions of the soils factored in to her patterns. Her observations ran from September through November with the majority of activity in the beginning, tapering off as the weather got cooler.
After many hours of observation, research and data analyzing, along with 16 notebooks filled with said data, Melissa has strengthened her conclusion that it is nearly impossible to determine any solid patterns in the animals' activities based on three hour windows of observation.
All of the projects were carefully judged last week with first second and honorable mentions for each category and division. Dymond and Bomkamp will move on to the Intel international Science fair in Reno, Nev., in May.
