District Science & Innovation Fair takes place March 7
Students across Surrey and White Rock are putting the finishing touches on their science projects for the district’s 57th annual Science and Innovation Fair, the longest-running science fair in British Columbia.
Open to students in Grades 4 to 8, the event is a chance for students to show off their science and research skills or showcase an innovation that they’ve come up.
While the district fair has been running for nearly six decades now, the innovation category was only introduced in recent years, created as a more modern arena for students looking to step out of the confines of a traditional science project.
“We had an increasing number of students submitting projects that didn’t necessarily fall into the criteria and grading scheme of past projects,” explained Craig Sutton, district helping teacher and fair organizer.
With traditional science fair projects focusing more on students demonstrating their learning and knowledge on a specific subject or experiment, the innovation category encourages students to pursue answers to things that may not currently have a definitive answer.
For example, Sutton said he was recently at a school where a student was exploring wind power and had created mock up models of windmills.
“She had tried a bunch of materials and blade designs to see which one would generate the most power,” he explained. “But with the design aspect and the prototyping of something new like that, it definitely leans more toward that innovation category.
Sutton said it’s especially rewarding to see students take inspiration from what others have done and build on what’s come before them. While last year’s fair showcased two examples of students coming up with papers sourced from waste and invasive plant materials, Sutton said this year’s fair has a student expanding on the idea by creating several types of papers made from different types of materials.
“This year we have a student exploring different kinds of pulps to create different types of papers, which can vary from use-to-use,” he explained, adding that uses could include anything from a protective wrap to a different type for writing and printing on and even one that may be useful for absorption, along the lines of paper towels.
“This fair is a celebration of learning that’s been taking place longer than almost anything else in the district,” said Sutton. “It never ceases to amaze me what these students are capable of at such an early age.”
The 57th annual Surrey Schools Science & Innovation Fair takes place Thursday, March 7, 5-8 p.m. in the Spruce Atrium of the Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Surrey Campus (12666 72 Ave, Surrey). For more information, click here.
