Juniors and seniors in Springside School’s Environmental Science class were hard at work this winter creating their own experiments for the American Museum of Natural History’s Young Naturalist Award Competition.

 

The Young Naturalist Award was established twelve years ago; its mission is to allow “students in grades 7-12 to promote participation and communication in science.”

 

 

In the beginning of November, we picked a topic that related to an aspect of the environment that we wanted to explore, accumulated background information, created a three to four page background, designed a detailed experiment, recorded our results, and drew conclusions about our projects.

 

Topics included observing local birds, testing the octane ratings of gasoline, analyzing the local herbs used by the Lenape Indians, investigating the forensics of meat decay, and measuring the water quality of local streams.

 

When we returned to school after winter break, each of us presented a PowerPoint report to the class summarizing our work. I found a few of the projects especially interesting. Katie Wisniewski, a senior at Springside School, found various types of herbs such as thyme, rosemary, and mint. She experimented to determine which were most useful in making teas, perfumes, and medicines and connected these uses to what the Lenape Indians employed in the 1800’s.

 

Ryan Stapleton, a junior at Chestnut Hill Academy, researched the LEED program – Leadership in the Environment and Energy Designs, which is geared towards maximizing operational efficiency while minimizing environmental impacts. He found out how new LEED-certified buildings, such as the Flyers’ ice rink and the new Chestnut Hill Academy Science Building, comply with LEED’s standards. He said his inspiration to research LEED came while attending a Flyers game.

 

Another project tested whether or not there is a difference in the octane levels in vehicles’ gasoline. Todd Cramer, also a junior at Chestnut Hill Academy, took three different cars with different recommended levels of octane and observed how the gas mileage differed. Todd said this topic of gasoline was important to him because he now knows how to maximize the gas mileage of his car by using the recommended octane level of gas.

 

“It was really exciting to see the students study an environmental issue that was important to them. To learn science, one must do science. This project gives students real-life research skills, and then challenges them to present them in a professional manner,” remarked Dr. Kim Eberle-Wang, who teaches the Environmental Science elective to juniors and seniors as part of the Chestnut Hill Academy/ Springside School coordinate program.

 

Our YNA projects were sent as entries to the American Museum of Natural History’s 2009 Young Naturalist Awards Competition. The winners of this competition will be announced in the spring on the AMNH website.

Visit the Springside School website for more information.