GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP — There were no slam dunks or volleyball spikes, just the sights and sounds of science filling Stockton University's Sports Center on Saturday morning.
Displays showing plant growth, saving energy and how bones grow mixed with ways to remove makeup and how to train a fish surrounded the basketball court and bleachers for the 49th annual Jersey Shore Science Fair. Students ranging from sixth to 12th grade built and presented the displays.
It was all for the sake of science and the reward of proudly presenting months — and for some, more than a year — of hard work and research.
"Seeing the kids interact and just love what they do and being able to do something and be passionate about it, that's the key," said fair director Christine Schairer, the assistant director of Academic Laboratories and Field Facilities at Stockton's School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
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Jersey Shore Science Fair is the region's largest middle and high school fair. It ran from early Saturday morning until the early afternoon at the Sports Center, and it featured more than 320 students from 34 middle and high schools from Atlantic, Cape May, Monmouth and Ocean counties. There were 328 projects in 15 categories, ranging from biological sciences to engineering to behavioral science. Homeschooled students also participated.
For safety reasons, including the amount of wiring it would take, the displays were not electrical, meaning most of the students had to rely on detailed posterboards and non-electrical displays and examples.Â
There were 15 categories broken up into age brackets — junior (grades 6-8), intermediate (grades 9-10) and upper (grades 11-12) — with an opportunity to advance to the Delaware Valley Regional Science Fair to be held April 2-4 at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks, Pennsylvania. First and second in the team and non-team junior categories, and the top three in the team and non-team intermediate and upper categories advanced to regionals.
More than 100 judges were broken into groups of two or three each. Six of those judgers were faculty members from Stockton's School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Each display was judged three times.Â
Schairer, who had been involved with the fair for 23 years before becoming the director last year, said Saturday's turnout was a huge leap from the more than 100 students who participated last year. It's not the 600-plus students who presented before the COVID-19 pandemic, but she's happy to see the participation slowly climbing again.
"It's my passion. Science is my background, and seeing a new generation of scientists coming up and loving it is great," Schairer said.
She marveled at how some of the projects she'd seen, especially from the younger kids, are stuff she's seen college students do.
"And you see they're in action. I see when walking through and can tell they're nervous, I say 'just breathe, you've got this' and you all of a sudden see them calm down," she added, saying it really shows how talking about something these kids were passionate about made it easier for them to present, especially the first-timers.
Mohammad Abuelfual, 13, of Toms River, featured the fun side of science. He showed how watering kidney bean plants with Pepsi or Red Bull fared against water. He found that, yes, it would work.
"It's not like I'm telling you to go ahead and water your plants with Fanta," joked the eighth grader at Intermediate North in Toms River. "I had fun doing this."
Arabella Cristelo, a sixth grade student at Bishop McHugh Regional Catholic School in Cape May Court House, thought she would be a lot more nervous and awkward than she was, especially when the judges were around.
"When I'm talking about science, it's a whole different thing," said the 11-year-old from North Cape May, who had a display showing how plants grow in different color lights. "Because I know what I'm going to say, it's just easier."
Noah Lessig, a sixth-grade student at Intermediate North, said he's always liked talking to people, so he wasn't nervous about his first science fair. He was excited to show off the passion he's had for gardening since he was little. His presentation was on hydroponics, the use of water-based nutrients instead of soil to grow plants.
"The biggest challenge was ... a lot of this you can't do a month ahead," said Lessig, 11. "You have to wait a certain time period, because if you wait too long you won't be able to finish it, but you'll need enough data, too. Time constraints were a big problem."
Drew Graziano, an eighth grader at Pilgrim Academy in Egg Harbor City, did research on alkalinity in drinking water. He gathered some samples during his travels, including in Texas, and his mother even brought back samples from a trip to Spain.Â
"I won (the fair) at my school, so it's an honor to be here," said the 14-year-old from Hammonton.
Hope Swansinger, 13, of Howell, standing in front of her display on dinoflagellates, a luminescent single-cell organism, has been working on her research since December.Â
"Originally, I started by figuring out what they were and finding a bunch of facts about them," the Howell Middle School South seventh grader said. "Then I started collecting data on how they glow and everything like that."
Morgan Zylinski, 16, and Amalie Werner, 16, students at Marine Academy of Technology and Environmental Science in Stafford Township, have been interested in science since middle school.Â
This was the second time Zylinski competed at the fair. Having grown up on Barnegat Bay in Lavallette, Ocean County, Zylinski said she has always had a passion for environmental science. Her display Saturday was on the presence of ferulic acid, an antioxidant compound in plant cells, in the salt marsh grass found in Barnegat Bay.
"One of my favorite aspects of these science fairs, even if you don't win anything, even if you don't advance, it's still so rewarding be able to express and share what you learned," said Zylinski, who had worked on her project since last spring.
Werner spent about 10 months on her project on wildfire and burn effects on the Pine Barrens. She got the inspiration from the Canadian wildfires in early 2023 as well as the fire in Warren Grove last April. She talked of the challenges of managing lab work on the 105 samples she collected on top of regular school work, extracurricular activities and sports.
"It was a very time-consuming process,"  said Werner, of Manahawkin, "but it was so rewarding to get to science fairs like this and be recognized for the work we do and the effort that we put in for our projects."
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