From studies to detect aggression levels in Siamese fighting fish, to testing whether Nike or Adidas basketball shoes are the best for leaping on a basketball court, science fair projects provide entertainment and a certain amount of head-scratching for those who hand out the medals.
With 109 projects involving 142 students to evaluate, it will be an intense day of scrutiny Saturday for the 70 judges at the Central Interior Science Exhibition.
"It's a combination of what their project was about, the science behind it, how well they've been able to communicate and represent that, and how well through the presentation and display of what they're doing they show their understanding of it," said chief judge Chris Jackson, now in her 17th year judging the Central Interior Science Exhibition.
"You're looking to see that the student is excited about the work and understands what they've done, so you're always wondering how much was done by students and how much was done by someone else, especially with some of the sophisticated complex things some of them are presenting."
Each project will be considered by a panel of two judges and presenters will have 15 or 20 minutes to explain their work during the morning medal round judging. Special awards judging takes place later in the day.
"Many of the judges have been involved for a long time," said Jackson, a senior lab instructor at UNBC in geography and earth sciences.
Judges follow a detailed grading system to mark each project and determine the medalists in each of the exhibition categories - life sciences, biotechnology and pharmaceutical, computing and information technology, earth and environmental, health, physical and mathematical, engineering and automotive services. Science fair projects are either experiments, innovations/inventions or studies.
Students in Grades 7 to 12 will compete for the right to represent the region in the Canada-wide science fair in Toronto in May.
Students in Grades 4 to 6 are not eligible for the national event. Last year, four projects and five students represented the Central Interior in the Canada-wide fair and all four projects received awards.
This year's projects will be open for public viewing at the UNBC Bentley Centre from 2:30 - 4:30 p.m. and from 6 - 6:45 p.m.
