Kaitlynn Goulette holds up the first-place and Alnylam Bioscience Excellence Award she received from the district science fair for her project, “Acheta domesticus (crickets) Consumption Rates as a Function of Varying Electromagnetic Wavelengths.”
Reminder Publishing submitted photo
WESTFIELD — Several projects featured at the Western Mass Regional Science & Engineering Fair at Western New England University in March are moving on to compete in the state science fair on April 9 at the DCU Center in Worcester.
“Our students did a fantastic job representing our district at the Western Massachusetts Regional Science & Engineering Fair at Western New England University. Their hard work, creativity, and dedication truly shined,” said Westfield Public Schools Science Fair Coordinator Christina Smith.
The students moving on with their projects include Kaitlynn Goulette, who won a first place and the Alnylam Bioscience Excellence Award for her project, “Acheta domesticus Consumption Rates as a Function of Varying Electromagnetic Wavelengths.”
As an astronomer, Goulette said she is interested in studying light pollution. Talking about her project at the Westfield High School fair, she said light pollution has physical impacts and disrupts circadian rhythm if it occurs over years, with health side effects.
She studied the effects of red, blue, white lights and darkness on the eating patterns of four groups of crickets, which she fed every 12 hours. She found the blue group ate the most, which was not a benefit as it led to overeating.
Goulette concluded that blue light is the worst for insects. She said many LED lights that people purchase are blue toned, and recommended looking for warmer toned LED lights that are yellow or red. “I think there’s going to be a big switch to warmer tones,” she said.
Giovanni Santaniello won third place and a MA Life Science Trailblazer Award at the district fair for “Mycoremediation Employing Pleurotus ostreatus var. columbinus to Degrade Plastics,” which studied the capability of oyster mushrooms to break down plastics.
“We need a way to degrade plastic while benefitting something else,” said Santaniello at the high school fair, where he had the top scoring project. For his experiment, he grew oyster mushrooms in hay — a challenge on its own — to see if they would break down polymer plastics into monomers.
The model showed the mushrooms degraded the plastic by 6 to 7% of the original size. After achieving that target, he put them in a shed that was 30 degrees and below, where the mushrooms survived and continued to decompose the plastics. Santaniello’s recommendation based on results was to grow mushrooms in landfills.
Also advancing to the state fair with a third place win was Alec Piepergerdes and Andy Liu for “Exposing the Effects of Noise Pollution Through Eisenia Fetida” (European night crawlers). In their project, they observed the earthworms for two weeks, and then introduced loud noises, up to 93 decibels, to see how it would affect them. Some of the discomfort they observed included the worms curling into a ball, surfacing, an absence of moisture and excessive burrowing. Their conclusion was that loud disruptive noises have a negative impact on worms and other wildlife.
Other third place district winners moving on to states include Paige Mello of WHS, with her project “How Plant Spacing Affects Growth Rate” and Adedipo Soyele of WHS with “Designing An Alternative Energy Source That Is Cost Efficient.”
Direct entrants to the state science fair submitted by Westfield Public Schools from WHS are Teagan Chisholm-Godshalk, who scored a third place win in the high school fair with “Smile Say ‘Plastics’: Investigating How Many Microplastics Are Hidden in Cheese”; and Isabella Chalmers, with her project “Analyzing How Different Tinted Glass Bottles Withstand Chemical Migration Against Solarization.”
Direct entrants to the state science fair from Westfield Technical Academy include Alexander Bousquet, Mason Matovich and Zar Iodlovskiy, who took first place among WTA students at the high school fair for “The Bounce Behavior of Batteries: An Analysis of Internal Structure and Charge State.”
Also moving on to state from WTA is Ximena Pena, second place at the high school fair from WTA for “A Study on Sustainable Cup Design as an Alternative to Plastic.”
“Congratulations to our incredible students from Westfield High School and Westfield Technical Academy,” said Smith.
