John Cooper Middle School students qualify for EfTA SCI://Tech Competition

THE WOODLANDS, Texas - Twenty five Middle School students from The John Cooper School qualified to continue in competition at the Science Engineering Fair of Houston by placing in the top five at the local EfTA SCI://Tech Competition. Based on results of the Houston competition, held on February 28, five Cooper students will now continue in competition at the state level.

Kabir Jolly placed first (engineering/transportation) with "Windmill Blade Design: Creating More Electricity." Placing second at Houston were Kate Fisher (engineering) with "Recycled Materials: An Insulated Bottle Brick," Kate Burns and Olivia Goodridge (botany/environmental/zoology) for "Ocean's Deathbed," and Jessica Young (environmental science) for "Holey Grail of Natural Gas." Bethan Holloway-Strong placed third in the chemistry category for "This Is To Dye For." These students will compete at the state level in the Texas Science and Engineering Fair to be held in San Antonio, March 26-29.

"This year was the start of a revised approach to the seventh and eighth grade science fair curriculum," said science faculty member John LaBonte, who teaches with Stef Groves. "Students have taken the skills covered in class and demonstrated their knowledge of the scientific process. Each of these budding scientists showed perseverance throughout the project and demonstrated a comprehensive scientific approach to their work. We are very proud of all of them."

Students were also given special recognitions at the Houston competition. Sammy Hari was given a special award in the chemistry category for "Old" Recycled Oils to "New" Biodiesel" and Aimery Methena for "Magnetic 'Force' on Oil Spill Clean-up" in the environmental category. Awarded honorable mentions were Bea Portela (botany) for "Duckweed: A Viable Bio-Indicator?" and William Cooper (social science) for "Facebook Battle: Positive vs. Negative Posts."

Students who also qualified for and competed in the Houston science fair were Ale Chow, Tierney Gregory, Unity Hag, Daniel Floris, Vandana Venkatesh, Harrshavasan Congivaram, Emily Cooper, Katie Evans, Lisa Alexander, Ashley Wu, Rishi Wahi, Jared Ramirez and Rohan Zakharia.