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Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader?

TRIBUNE PHOTO/ CLIFF MCBRIDE

TAMPA PALMS -- Reporters Michele Sager, left, and Courtney Cairns Pastor present their science fair project to fifth-graders at Chiles Elementary.

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By COURTNEY CAIRNS PASTOR and MICHELE SAGER, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 19, 2008

Updated: 02/18/2008 05:22 pm

TAMPA - It's the night before we're scheduled to conduct our science fair experiment, and it's not looking good.

Nearly three hours have passed, and only half of the cupcakes we are supposed to bake are done and iced. We made one Publix run because of an ingredient shortage. We disqualified six cupcakes because they were too large. Another cupcake suffered damage coming out of the oven. Everything is taking longer than we thought.

We order a pizza.

More than 800 students will enter projects in the Hillsborough Regional Science and Engineering Fair when it opens for judging on Wednesday. To make it to the county fair, many competed at their schools with hundreds more students.

Do the math, and that means thousands of parents had to navigate their way through terminology they hadn't heard in years and rules so precise that any sloppiness or corner-cutting can cost you points.

Between the two of us, we have covered 16 science fairs over the years, so we've seen a lot of "Which microwave popcorn brand pops the best?" and "Which bouncy ball bounces the highest?" presentations.

The high school projects - and some middle school ones - looked complicated and, well, scientific. But how hard could it be to ace an elementary school project?

We decided to do our own science fair experiment and see for ourselves.

Courtney and Michele's Big Project

We followed a suggestion in the county's parent guide and picked a fun topic so we wouldn't get bored.

We chose cupcakes. Yum.

We read that green and red foods tend to be popular, and blue and purple are not. So we decided to bake a bunch of cupcakes, frost 10 in each of those colors and see which colors our co-workers went for first.

How hard could that be?

We had no idea.

We didn't know our hypothesis was supposed to have a "because" in it. As in, "Fewer people will take blue cupcakes because blue is a less appetizing color." (Otherwise it's a prediction, we found out later.)

We didn't know our conclusion had to say "based on my research." As in, "Based on my research, blue cupcakes proved to be the most popular."

We sat down with our log book to write out our variables and realized we didn't even know what a "responding variable" was. Turns out it's important.

We had to list materials in metric amounts, which meant Googling for conversion charts.

And we had to keep everything consistent, so all of the cupcakes had to be the same flavor and the same size with the same amount of icing. Right.

Even the one part of our project we thought was foolproof fooled us. Normally in The Tampa Tribune newsroom, a plate of food disappears quickly. But we raised suspicions with our cameras and charts.

It didn't help when several people asked if this was our "experiment," causing others to shrink back and wonder how we had doctored the cupcakes. Someone else passed up the cupcakes entirely, just because they weren't chocolate.

We finally gave away 26 of our 40 cupcakes and found out our hypothesis tanked. All of the blue cupcakes, which should have been unpopular, had disappeared. And there was an unexpected glitch with the red cupcakes - some men stayed away because they looked too pink.

We were right that most people avoided the purple cupcakes, but that might have been because the icing's gray cast looked like caulk.

Onward.

We thought maybe we could redeem ourselves with a killer display. Except ... although we remembered the glue sticks, the scissors, the poster board and the pictures, we forgot a ruler. Clean, straight edges are a science fair must. Still, as the cutting and gluing entered its third hour, we worked faster and worried less about aesthetics.

We would hear about that later.

The Judges Have Their Say

We arranged for Sharon Cutler's fifth-grade class at Chiles Elementary in Tampa Palms to judge our efforts. Cutler is a frequent judge at the county fair, so her students know a thing or two about creating a winning project.

We nervously entered the classroom and opened our display board. We knew we had jagged edges, missing trials and the wrong variables listed, but we hoped the students wouldn't notice. Sure enough, they smiled and spoke sweetly as we presented our project. We figured they were putty in our hands.

We were wrong.

The first hint of trouble was when Alex Enzor, 11, asked if we had a log book. We smiled. Of course. "Can I see it?" he asked. And then he combed over it like a teacher grading an exam, judging the neatness and precision of our notes.

The students began to pepper us with questions. Can you show us your averages chart? We didn't have one. Can I read your research paper? We didn't write one. Did you give the cupcakes to different groups and different ages? No.

We should have read the rule book through before we started our project; we learned many of the requirements too late.

This is why you shouldn't wait until the last minute to do your project, one little girl reminded us. When we explained that we had full-time jobs and had to combine this project with our other reporter duties, she reminded us of the homework and other school obligations students must balance.

Touche.

Our student judges offered many helpful tips from their experiences. One told us we forgot to explain the "real-word application" of our project. Many said our display board needed larger print and neater edges.

"I see a lot of rips in your paper," said Devyn Castro-Almeyda, 10.

Our board took hours, we said. One student shrugged. His display took two days.

Some students tried to make us feel better. "The good part is it's red, white and blue," offered 10-year-old Alexys Salamin.

The students graded us with the score sheet used at the real science fair. We lost 10 points for not having an averages graph, and another 10 points for not writing a research paper. We did get perfect scores for our purpose and hypothesis.

The moment of truth was upon us. The final tally revealed a score of 74. We were pleased to have passed, but some students chuckled over our C grade.

So would our project be good enough to bring home a prize at the fair?

Olivia Kahn, 10, was tactful. "Yours probably would work if you took the corrections," she said. "You might get third."

Our conclusion? The science fair is harder than it looks. Read all directions carefully, allow plenty of time and don't be afraid to ask for help.

It's clear we won't be walking away with any medals. But we do have a new appreciation for all those students and their parents who pop popcorn and bounce bouncy balls.

Reporter Courtney Cairns Pastor can be reached at (813) 865-1503 and reporter Michele Sager can be reached at (813) 865-4843.

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