TCCHS announces science fair winners

THOMASVILLE — Coronavirus transformed how Thomas County Central High School held its annual science fair this year, but it could not eradicate the curriculum staple.

TCCHS Science Department recently announced the winners of the TCCHS Virtual School Science Fair. Bishop Jackson earned first place for his continuing project to design an app to detect skin cancer, “Skin Scanner: Diagnosing Melanoma with an Android App.” Jackson McCorkle garnered second place for expanding his idea from last year’s fair in his project, “Reliability of ML.Net,” which tested the new machine learning framework program for accuracy. Ayden Webb received third place for his exploration of the weight capacity of various brands’ fishing line in “Fishing for Results.”

Science teacher Ryan Strickland, who instructs all three overall placers, said students stepped up and adjusted to this year’s virtual fair.

“Each of them has been very competitive in previous science fairs and did an excellent job,” he said of the winners.  

Much like the scientific method students use in their projects, the science department had to adapt its annual fair to comply with pandemic conditions. 

“As an integral part of the TCCHS science department, it was determined that we make the science fair project more streamlined,” department chair Meagan Bradshaw said. “Students were still offered the same two choices as previous years: science fair or Exploravision. For both projects, we reduced the number of assignments every nine weeks. They had two parts due the first nine weeks and two parts due the second nine weeks. Everything was submitted virtually.”

Instead of the traditional backboard, students received a digital template on Google slides to build their project’s board. Project ideas were limited to ones that could be done individually or by students living in the same household. The department also generated potential topics to aid students in finding experiments that could meet the revised requirements.  

Each teacher selected the top three projects from their classes for official fair submission. Judging took place on Jan. 12 by Thomas County Schools administrative personnel Dr. Dale Graham and Dr. Scott Sweeting.

“They used a standard science fair rubric to come up with the top three overall projects,” Bradshaw said.

Honorable Mentions went to Veronica VanLandingham and Uyennhi Lenguyen.

All winners have the opportunity to advance to the ABAC Regional Virtual Science Fair, which will take place virtually Feb. 15. 

“Each student will look to clean up their virtual presentation for their project heading into the regional fair,” Strickland said.