SHREWSBURY, Massachusetts – One of my personal highlights during the course of the school year is the two day science fair, held in the SHS media center.  This year, was no exception, with a group over over 50 dynamic young scientists in grades 9, 10 and 11 displaying their personal research and engineering projects.  Many of these have been worked on for almost a year now, and present some truly innovative ideas that are far beyond what you might expect from a high school student.

Visitors were treated to as wide an array of different project as I’ve ever seen.  We saw techniques for testing the efficacy of different means of absorbing oil spills, several green energy initiatives which studied wind and solar power, a new version of one of last years great projects, which created an energy producing fuel cell out of common household bacteria.   While on the subject of those, we learned about which anti-bacterial soaps were best, and how long one needed to wash their hands to get rid of contamination.

On the forefront of technology, a student illustrated a potential new iPhone application, which would be called iMood, and would work to cheer you up when you’re depressed.  In a project that I’m still trying to understand, a student explored different means of increasing the solubility of various drugs through chemical manipulation, while another described the process of dissolving a cold pill once it’s swallowed.

The “near space experimentation platform” made it’s debut, and this device was quite dramatic, soaring to 20 miles above the earth, where it’s able to conduct experiments at high altitude.  In keeping with an ecological theme, we were treated to several projects which studied the effect of acid rain on corrosion of metals, as well as it’s effect on various lake creatures.

The twelve best projects from Shrewsbury High School will be selected to move on to the Worcester Regional Science Fair at WPI in March.  Those who wind up in the top three at the WPI event will then be selected to represent Worcester County at the State Science Fair to be held at WPI in May.