Marple Newtown Homeschoolers Participate in Science Fair

Sixty K-12 homeschooled students, including three from Marple Newtown, descended upon Crossroads Community Church in Upper Darby last Saturday to display and present their science and engineering projects. The 2014 Greater Philadephia Area Homeschool Science Fair (GPHSF) was held despite power outages barring it from the usual location of Villanova University.  This marked the fifteenth anniversary of the fair, produced by Science Resources, a Marple-based organization dedicated to providing K-12 science education to the homeschooling community and beyond. (www.science-resources.org) 

The nineteen judges included employees from Lockheed Martin, GlaxoSmithKline, The Agnes Irwin School and Villanova University who donated their time to interview the homeschoolers, read written reports and evaluate presentations.  Judging criteria included:  quality of project report, appropriate execution of experiment, repeated use of observations and controls, plus the degree of topic creativity. 

Science fair alumnus Matthew Momjian of Newtown Square returned as a judge of the sixth grade projects.  Momjian is a recent graduate of Franklin and Marshall College currently applying to medical schools and working as an EMT.  He participated in GPHSF all through high school.   “I wanted to give back because I learned a lot through science fair.  I want the kids to have the opportunity to learn the same things that I did… the scientific method, perseverance and public presentation.”  Momjian said that projects he judged were ambitious and well-executed for sixth graders.

The Director’s Highest Honor was awarded to senior Julia Swieson of Broomall for participating in GPHSF every year since kindergarten.  Julia’s project was entitled, Can Gum Improve Your Memory?  Swieson gave over 20 people information to memorize and then administered a test the following day.  In some cases the people were chewing gum during memorization and testing, with the goal being to discover if it makes a difference to keep the same taste and smell during learning.  Swieson also received the “Best of High School” award for her project.

Seventh grader William Livezey, of Newtown Square, submitted an engineering project entitled, The X-Craft: A New Breed of Hovercraft.  Eighth grader Xing Hua Swieson, of Broomall, gathered data about air pressure over the United States in her project called, Highs and Lows. 

GPHSF recipients for Outstanding Project were:

K- Gabriel Ricou, Ardmore, PA

1st- Eleanor Ghrist, Jenkintown, PA

2nd- Zachary Amos, Aston, PA

3rd- Nathanial Chen, Wayne, PA

4th- Victoria Sindlinger, Philadelphia, PA

5th- Louie Ricou, Ardmore, PA

6th- Arthur Dozier, Southampton, NJ

7th- Anna Brutsche, Wilmington, PA and Joan Levis, Rose Valley, PA

8th- Calvin Raab, Perkiomenville, PA

9th- Joel Chapman, Delaware

10th- Michael Grostas, Jamison, PA

12th- Julia Swieson, Broomall, PA

6-12 Engineering- Austin Schmolz, Lester, PA

GSHSF Corporate Sponsors were EPEX (www.epex.cc) and Giant

Judges and Volunteers were fed by:  Giant of Broomall, PA, Original Bagel of Broomall, PA; Panera Bread of Newtown Square, PA;  and Acme of Newtown Square, PA

Prizes donors were: Wards Natural Science, The Franklin Institute, Carolina Biological, The Academy of Natural Sciences, Delta Education and EPEX.