![]() Judge Lisa Tsimanis, a former RAND health policy researcher and a competitor herself when she was in school, said she pushes students to think about where their projects could lead. It can be an intense interaction, with the judges including university researchers, professional scientists and other experts. On judging day, the students present their projects three times to different groups of judges for 15 minutes. They compete in 18 categories, including math, physics, botany, behavioral sciences and chemistry. “Our goal is to encourage them to continue in science and appreciate science.”Ĭompetitors range from sixth-graders making their first appearance to seniors with multiple wins under their belts. “Our first rule of thumb for our judges is to be supportive,” he said. Science fair board member Arnold Shugarman, a retired chemist and college professor, said organizers want to inspire passion for the sciences – the same passion that’s brought him back for more than two decades. Division for middle school and high school draw competitors from public and private schools, vying for prizes and a chance for 94 winners to progress to the state science fair. The contestants are all graduates of school or even school-district science fairs, but this is where the competition shifts into high gear. ![]() “It’s exciting,” said patent attorney Michelle Glasky Bergman, one of about 180 judges who strolled through displays at the Orange County fairgrounds, quizzing students about their work. Procedure 6 is repeated for 10 days, once a day and all the timings are recorded in the table.Those are just a sample of the 400-plus science projects reviewed by judges this week at the 56th annual Orange County Science and Engineering Fair. The time taken by each hamster to find the sunflower seed was recorded.ħ. ![]() The hamsters were dropped at the start of the maze one at a time. A sunflower seed was placed at the end of the maze. For the first 5 days, the hamsters in group 1 continued to listen to Mozart and for the last 5 days, they did not.Ħ. After the 12 weeks, the hamsters were made to run through the maze and the time taken wasrecorded. The hamsters in group 1 were made to listen to Mozart for 12 weeks (84 days) and the hamsters in group 2 did not listen to any music.ĥ. The hamsters were divided into 2 groups of 3 hamsters each. This is because hamsters depend on their sense of smell to find food and the smell of the glue could have been a distraction.Ĥ. Once the maze as completed, it was left outdoors for 2 days, in order for the smell of the glue to dissipate. See figure 1 for an example of the maze.ģ. ![]() The height of the walls of the maze was at least 250mm in order to prevent the hamsters from jumping out. A maze approximately the size of 400mm x 640mm was made using cardboard, glue and masking tape. The constants (control variables) were the recordings of the music pieces used, the size and type of maze, how hungry the hamsters were, and the type of food used.Ģ. The dependent variable was the time taken for the hamster to complete the maze. ![]() For this science fair project, the independent variable is whether the hamsters were exposed to Mozart's music or not. However, when Mozart was played, the entire cortex was stimulated including areas of the brain associated with vision, motor coordination and higher-thought processing. The MRI imaging showed that most types of music stimulate the auditory cortex and sometimes the part of the brain associated with emotion. Neuro-biologists Mark Bodner and Gordon Shaw conducted other experiments using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at the University of California. Despite the criticism, listening to Mozart is believed to help patients with Alzheimer’s disease and numerous tests have been conducted to prove that it also helps mice solve mazes more quickly! However, the experiment has been criticized because other researchers were not able to reproduce the same results. Their experiments showed that people who listened to Mozart scored better results at IQ tests. The Mozart Effect was first discovered about 20 years ago by neuro-biologist Gordon Shaw at the University of California. This result of mental enhancement, after listening to Mozart, is known as the "Mozart Effect". The theory is that it helps to stimulate and enhance our mental capacities. Listening to recordings of performances of Mozart's musical pieces is believed to enhance and boost brain power, especially spatial-temporal reasoning. ![]()
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