SUGARLOAF TWP. — From lipstick that lasts to water bottles that stay cool, students tested products and theories during a science fair at Valley Elementary/Middle School.
Some 170 students displayed their projects on Feb. 25 in the gymnasium where classes visited during the day, and parents were invited to take a look in the evening.
“It’s the most we’ve had,” said Megan Andrasko, one of the teachers who three years ago revived the science fair that shut down duiring COVID-19.
Retired teachers, professors and a nuclear engineer were among the judges who rated the projects of students in third through sixth grade. Kindergartners, first and second graders did projects for the show without being judged.
“We teach the scientific method so they have an idea to do the project at home,” Andrasko said. Parents help out.
Most projects begin with a hypothesis that students wanted to test.
One student wanted to know which lipstick lasted longest. She tried different brands and pressed her lips to paper five times with each to see which left the strongest impression on the last test.
“How do plants stop erosion?” was the title of a project done by a student whose father is a farmer. The finding: Roots hold the soil together.
Other topics included how the size of a parachute slowed descent, whether black light could detect bioluminesence in humans and whether a basketball bounced higher off floor made of wood, concrete or carpet.
Wood yielded the highest bounce to the surprise of the young scientists who thought concrete would give the most spring but disproved their hypothesis by recording the height of each rebound with a camera.
Brothers Reid and Cooper Maue, identical twins who are in fourth grade, did dissimilar projects with different partners.
Cooper and Giovannia Mariano said they play a lot of sports so they tested water bottles. Filling each bottle with water cooled to 27 degrees Fahrenheit, they sampled the rise in temperature every hour.
Valley Elementary/Middle School fourth grader Cooper Maue and Giovanni Mariano explain there science fair project about Which Water Bottle keeps Water Cold the Longest on Wednesday Feb. 25, 2026.(John Haeger / Staff Photographer)
Reid teamed with Patrick McBride. Using McBride’s 3D printer, they made a catapault and measured the distances that the machine hurled a weight. The greater the counterweight, the longer the throw, they found.
Another project sample bacteria on an ATM machine, recreation center basketball, gas pump and grocery store checkout screen.
The students expected the basketball would have had the bacteria, but were surprised to discover that the grocery store screen tested higher.
“We believe it was touched by the most people,” they wrote.