Flight simulator project takes first place at Webutuck STEAM Fair

AMENIA — Webutuck freshman Nolan Howard took first place at Webutuck’s 12th annual STEAM Fair on Saturday, March 21, with his presentation on the science of flight simulators.

Howard brought his flight simulation gear to Webutuck’s middle school gymnasium, complete with joysticks and a monitor to demonstrate how the technology can aid in training pilots for real-world situations.

The annual STEAM Fair is a showcase of Webutuck students’ scientific experiments, collections or discoveries. Organizers said this year brought more than 70 student participants ranging in age from kindergarten to high school for the annual event.

More than 30 faculty volunteers and seven students helped judge the presentations. First-place participants in middle and high school have a chance to take their presentations to the Dutchess County Science Fair. Webutuck fifth grader Lilliana Nelson took home first place in the middle school division with her presentation exploring the effects of different types of salt on making ice cream. Nelson and Howard will now have the opportunity to take their presentations to the Dutchess County Science Fair on April 11 at Dutchess Community College.

Presentations at this year’s STEAM Fair included demonstrations of hydraulics and pneumatics, such as sixth-grader June Duncan’s hydraulic soda can crusher that she constructed out of plastic tubing, syringes and an empty plastic food container; an exploration of plant hydration science with freshman Sabin Kane’s test of Gatorade as a substitute for water in germinating radish seeds — which proved once and for all that plants do not crave electrolytes.

“Turns out that Gatorade is not good for the plants,” Kane said. “I did not think that would be the case. It’s mostly made out of water.”

Duncan’s hydraulic can crusher used the incompressible power of water to crush soda cans into almost-flat disks. She said she ran into trouble when cans wouldn’t immediately give, causing an important valve in the system to burst and forcing her to find another solution.

“It takes 50 or 60 pounds to crush the can,” Duncan said. “With dense cans, we kept blowing our check valve so it kept popping and breaking.”

Other presentations included classic chemical reactions such as mixing Coke and Mentos and baking soda volcanoes, explorations of homemade slime and a substance called oobleck — a non-Newtonian fluid that refuses to flow under pressure — and dioramas of different parts of the animal kingdom.

Nathan Miller

Hannah Martyniak explains her lemon-based battery demonstration, which uses the fruit’s acidity to power a lightbulb. Her project won the Visual Communications Award for outstanding presentation of scientific concepts.