Lemon lamp a bright idea

Lemon lamp a bright idea
When life gives you lemons — make electricity.
Well, that’s what 10 year old Gabe Davey must have heard, because instead of fixing a refreshing summer drink, the Claude E. Garton Public School student MacGuyvered a lamp using little more than the sour fruit and an LED bulb.
Davey’s experiment was one of over 100 science projects on display at Lakehead University’s C.J. Sanders Fieldhouse gym on Tuesday. The Northwestern Ontario Regional Science Fair had students from grades 4 to 12 from across the region showcasing a diverse range of experiments.
“My goal in this was to examine how many fruits it would take to light the bulb, and my question was what fruit would take the least,” explained Davey, who pitted lemons, oranges and grapefruits against each other in a battle of citrus supremacy.
Lemons came out on top with only three needed to light up the bulb.
Fionna Fenlon’s eye-catching experiment titled “How Haunted is Your House?” dealt with a phantom of the energy kind — the electricity that household items waste even when turned off, often referred to as phantom energy.
“It’s nothing about Ghostbusters, sorry to disappoint,” Fenlon joked before explaining the worst perpetrators of phantom energy, such as old TVs, desktop computer towers, and laptops that are kept plugged in after they have finished charging.
Fenlon, a Grade 10 student from Sir Winston Churchill high school, tested different electronics using a voltmeter and said that by unplugging rarely-used electronics, money can be saved and our carbon footprint can be reduced.
Students could choose any topic they liked, and like Fenlon, many had an environmental angle. Proof of the importance that environmental protection was on the students’ minds.
For the record, there were no exhibits either proving or disproving the existence of ghosts, so that mystery still remains.
Chelsea Kubinec’s experiment may have lacked a fun prop like a vinegar-fuelled volcano — and yes, there was a volcano — but her experiment on how age correlates with gender stereotyping was just as intriguing.
Kubinec said she was bothered by the way gender is portrayed in marketing as well as the stereotypical jokes she heard from others, so she created a survey that tested people’s beliefs based on their age.
“I focused on gender stereotyping because I hear so many people make stereotypical jokes, so I wanted to make people aware that they are hurtful, and I wanted to display it with actual results,” Kubinec explained.
The St. Ignatius High School student found that older adults tend to believe gender stereotypes, but that the trend rapidly declines for the 17- to 24-year-old demographic, a promising result to be sure.
Michael Kisro, a Grade 6 student from Sacred Heart School in Sioux Lookout, built a miniature steam-powered boat using only copper tubing and a candle to propel it forward, demonstrating the properties of steam and water pressure.
“I wanted to do a steam train but that would be a bit harder,” said Kisro, who spent one day building the boat and another two constructing his board of information.
Brendan Sawanas and Kansis Mandamin, two grade 10 students from Thomas Fiddler Memorial High School, ran a series of tests to see if humans could develop echolocation, the biological sonar used by bats and dolphins to “hear their surroundings.”
Indeed, tests showed that blindfolded students could make sounds and hear echoes to navigate. High-frequency clicking sounds worked best, and young students fared better than teachers, supporting the belief that hearing degrades with age.
Awards for the Northwestern Ontario Regional Science Fair will be given out tonight from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in Lakehead University’s Bora Laskin Auditorium.