La Reina, Colina students excel at Science Fair

Students from two Thousand Oaks schools were big winners at the 52nd annual Ventura County Science Fair held April 4-6 at Seaside Park in Ventura.

La Reina, an all-girls Catholic school, earned seven firstplace science projects, four in the senior division (grades nine to 12) and three in the junior division (grades six to eight).

Colina Intermediate School had five firsts in the junior division.

More than 700 students countywide entered projects in the event, sponsored by the Ventura County Office of Education, along with HAAS Automation, Amgen and various sciencerelated organizations.

Those whose projects were judged best or second best in their categories qualify for the California State Science Fair in Los Angeles on May 22 and 23.

Senior division winners from La Reina, along with the names of their projects, were:

Tierney Burke (Animal Behavior and Social Sciences), AntiTumor Action of Indole-3 Carbinol by Suppression of NFKappB Activation;

Amanda Turk and Rachel Yuergert (Earth, Space and Environmental Sciences), The Styrofoam Solution;

Jacqueline McSweeney and Gemma Yparilla (Engineering), Transmission of Sound Waves Through Light and Fiber Optics;

Elizabeth Llanes (Mathematics, Computer Sciences and Electronics), Assessing the Performance of the Viterbi Decoding Algorithm.

La Reina's junior division winners were:

Katie Kavetsky (Animal Behavioral and Social Sciences), Chow Time;

Kailyn Carter (Chemistry), Crazy Calorimetry;

Jodi Loo and Kimberly Ha (Engineering), Maximizing Solar Panel Power by Titling its Angle Towards the Sun.

Colina Intermediate School winners were:

Miranda Fong (Botany), A Leaf's True Colors;

Sonia Barrad (Human Behavioral and Social Sciences), Voices That Speak to Us;

Nik Crain (Human Behavioral and Social Sciences), Is Our Sense of Smell Sensible?

Abhi Jairam (Physics), Detecting a Red Light Runner, the Easy Way;

Tyler Baca (Zoology), Sea Hermit Crabs.

Other junior division winners from Conejo Valley area schools were:

Thomas de Lyon, Sequoia Intermediate School (Biochemistry), Polarimetry: Measuring the Optical Activities of Sugars; Phoebe Ng, Los Cerritos Middle School (Microbiology), Clean and Cleaner;

Michael Iorga, home-schooled (Physics), Defractive Bending of Laser Beams.

Erik Aidukas of Westlake High School won the senior division in Human Behavioral and Social Sciences with his project, the Effects of Anonymous Testing on Teenage Boys and Washing.

For complete results, visit the website at www.vcsf.us.