26 February 2013
SCIENCE: Even at the high school point of their careers, students can still display a love of discovery.
By Tyler Demshki, Staff writer
A school science fair can do much to help a student in his or her academic career. The event gives a student the chance to pursue a scientific subject he or she is interested in, as well as the more lucrative prospect of winning prizes or scholarly recognition. Poly’s recent science fair, hosted at UCR, gave our students this chance and allowed one student in particular to excel: Lily Naik (10).
Naik’s project was on the bioremediation of the Santa Ana River. In layman’s terms, it was concerned with where water would or would not be clean in the Santa Ana River. Her method was to take samples from various areas in the river to test her hypothesis, which was that a certain area rich with plant-life and bacteria, called a riparian zone, would clean the water. Her data ended up supporting her hypothesis, with the water being the cleanest in the riparian zone and getting progressively dirtier as it journeyed to the sea.
Naik’s project took a lot of work, and fortunately this was recognized by the officials in the science fair. She won a gold medal in the Environmental Science category, as well as three separate awards, one from the UCR Department of Biology, one from the UCR Department of Environmental Sciences and the last from the United States Department of Agriculture. On top of these awards, Naik was also offered a summer internship at the Environmental Department of UCR. This is potentially a great boon to Naik, as this is her second project in the environmental science category, and she expresses interest in going into the field professionally.
While a science fair is not every student’s cup of tea, it certainly is an important event for those interested. It can give students a taste of the real world of science and potentially help guide them towards a career in the same area.