Invention Convention
The Connecticut Science Center invites you to see some of the winning inventions and talk to the young inventors from this year’s Connecticut Invention Convention.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Christina, Grade 8, Danbury, CT
Metal Corrosion
The objective of this experiment was to evaluate the corrosion behavior of different metals. A wide range of metals including Aluminum, Gold, Tungsten, Cobalt, Chromium, Indium, Tantalum, Molybdenum, Silver, Copper, Platinum, Stainless Steel, and Steel were explored. Since metal corrosion is the transformation from a metal to a metal oxide and in some cases etching or dissolving of the metal, weight change was used to measure the extent of corrosion. The metal samples were exposed to two different environments: tap water and an 80g/l solution of sodium chloride. Since there was no measurable change in weight for any of the metal specimens, visual and microscopic inspection was then used to determine the degree of corrosion. A scale of 1-10 was used to quantify the degree of corrosion on each metal sample. From the data, it was determined that Electronegativity is not the only property that impacts metal corrosion behavior. It was observed that some non-reactive metals (with high electronegativity) exhibited high corrosion-resistance and some reactive metals showed signs of corrosion,
more so in the salt solution. Unexpectedly, some reactive metals, such as Tantalum, showed no signs of corrosion. This phenomenon can be explained by the formation of a protective oxide that prevents further reaction between the metal and its environment. In conclusion, the electronegativity was shown not to be the only property that determines a metal’s resistance to corrosion. Other properties include the formation of oxides or metal compounds (chlorides) on a metal’s surfaces.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Emily, Grade 8, Avon, CT
Can Snowflakes Be Modeled with Cellular Automata or Chaos?
For my project, I will be attempting to model snowflakes with cellular automata and fractals, namely the Koch snowflake. Cellular automata is a broad field of computer science that works in an infinite grid, and uses simple rules to control the state of each cell. In this case, I will be modeling Stephan Wolfram’s rule “a cell turns on if exactly one its neighbors was on in the previous step” on a hexagonal grid in Microsoft Visual Studio language C#. I also am recording snowflakes using three different rigs: a page protector sprayed with enamel that catches the snowflake and leaves an imprint, photographing them on a piece of black velvet, and using a microscope and a digital camera to also take pictures. With these three rigs, I will produce accurate models to compare with the output of my program. I discovered that the flakes can be accurately modeled on a hexagonal grid, which turns out to have several real-life applications including realistic CGI.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Olivia N. Kelly, Grade 7, Trumbull, CT
Is Soil-less The Best? A Study of Alternative Growing Systems and the Effects on Growth, Quality, and Vitamin C Content of Grape Tomatoes
Hydroponic gardening delivers the proper amount of water, nutrients, and light to each specific plant without weeds or chemical residues. This project was set up to determine if a home hydroponic system could allow grape tomato plants to grow faster, and be more flavorful and nutritious (measured by level of Vitamin C), than either conventional (“Miracle Gro”) or organic (“Miracle Gro Organic”, “Organic Gro”) systems. The first two parts involved planting and measuring plant growth between systems. Part 3 involved determining flavor differences between tomatoes grown in each system, but could not be performed since none of the tomatoes ripened sufficiently. The fourth part involved determining the level of Vitamin C via chemical titration, performed on green, unripened tomatoes. The first two parts confirmed that the hydroponic system enabled plants to grow much more quickly than any other system. A back-up experiment was conducted for Part 3 where participants blindly tasted store-bought versions of conventionally and organically-grown grape tomatoes (hydroponic unavailable). Results indicated the organic tasted slightly better than conventional versions. Part 4 results indicated the “Organic Gro” produced the highest level of Vitamin C, (10% higher than the hydroponic system), while both were more than double the level of either “Miracle-Gro” system. Overall, the hydroponic system produced grape tomatoes most quickly as predicted, followed by ”Organic Gro”. The hydroponic (along with the ”Organic Gro”) system, produced tomatoes with a comparatively high level of Vitamin C, also as predicted. However, parts three and four must be repeated with ripened tomatoes.