Carnduff students win national bronze

Two Carnduff Education Complex students attended the Canada Wide Science Fair in Regina last week and came home with a bronze medal.

Leah Macfarlane and Claire Larson were selected to attend the national event after their first place finish at the regional science fair in Stoughton on March 30. Their project was Alzheimers and Visual Perception.

They were accompanied by their science teacher, Jessica Morland, who is also the regional science fair co-ordinator and chairperson.

Setup and orientation took place on May 15, and judging happened the following day. The participants also visited the Saskatchewan Science Centre and took tours of various sites in southern Saskatchewan. 

Macfarlane, Larson and Morland went to the Big Muddy flats.

The tours also allowed them to meet young people from across the country.

There was also a simultaneous event for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) projects, which entertained the science fair participants.

Public viewing took place on May 18 and 19.

Morland wrote that this was Marcfarlane and Larson’s second year attending the Canada Wide Science Fair. Last year they went to Montreal with a project testing soil sterilization techniques. But they wanted to go in a completely different direction this year.

After much discussion and research, they decided to branch off into the medical field, specifically Alzheimer’s disease, for personal reasons. They began to look into other aspects of life that Alzheimer’s could affect besides memory loss to see if they could study them to find a way of diagnosis.

They came up with the idea of testing whether Alzheimer’s had an impact on colour perception, since one of them is colourblind. The goal of the project was to discover a possible trend in the results that may be used one day to test for the early onset of Alzheimer’s, in an easy, universal, non-invasive way. 

Their experiment proved that if people have a distinct correlation with Alzheimer’s, they will have a hindrance in their colour perception, colour contrast and reaction time.

An awards ceremony took place on May 19. Morland said the atmosphere helped the participants know that what they are doing with their science fair projects is a big deal. There were special awards, challenge awards and excellence awards, with gold, silver and bronze medals given out. 

Moreland noted the students were very excited when they heard their names announced for a bronze medal.

This is Carnduff’s first medal at the national fair, and the first medal won by a school in southeast Saskatchewan since 2010.

The science fair wrapped up with another public viewing, and opportunities for the media to view the projects, on May 20.

A total of 450 finalists from across the country were in Regina for the science fair.