A St. Albert student is off to a national science fair next month because of his bird-tastic research into sunflower seeds.
Jonathan Farr, a Grade 8 student at Sir George Simpson Junior High, won gold in the junior life sciences category at last weekend's Edmonton Regional Science Fair, held at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. The medal came with $150.
He was also one of the eight winners picked to represent the region at the upcoming Canada-Wide Science Fair this May in Lethbridge.
Farr said he had been hoping for a medal at the fair, but was completely surprised that he got picked to go to nationals.
"It was like, whoa! When did that happen?" he said.
The 53rd annual Edmonton Regional Science Fair is meant to give students a chance to explore their interests and develop public speaking skills by doing scientific research on a topic of their choice, said fair spokesperson Sue Chapotelle.
"They learn so much from each other as well," she said.
Students often spend months working on projects that cover everything from growing beans to finding cures for cancer, Chapotelle said.
Exhibits this year included looks at islet cell transplants, cellphone radiation, the five-second rule for food and more.
Farr's experiment started as a way to save money on birdseed. De-hulled seeds cost about twice as much as whole ones, he said, and he wanted to see which ones birds preferred.
With the help of Edmonton's Wildbird General Store, Farr set out six birdfeeders filled with either whole or de-hulled sunflower seeds and observed them over 18 days. While house finches preferred de-hulled seeds, as they like to sit at the feeder and pig out, chickadees favoured whole ones, as those keep longer and are easier to store.
About 52 per cent of the birds Farr spotted went for the de-hulled seeds over the whole ones – an insignificant difference, he said.
"Both birds ate both seeds," he said.
If you want to feed birds, he concludes, stick with whole seed and save your money.
Mind tricks
Chloe Braget and Grace Lawrence of Edmonton's Avonmore School used a classic trick to study how brain-development differences in age and gender affects behaviour – they had people search for a needle in a haystack.
The thing was, there was no needle, Braget said. Instead, she and Lawrence secretly filmed participants to see how they would initially approach the problem. Would they aggressively tear through the hay? Use the tools provided? Think before they acted?
Only adults over 25 bothered to think before they acted in the experiment, Braget said. Females and elementary students were far more likely to act aggressively.
About 70 per cent of test subjects probably wanted to punch them in the face when they learned there was no needle, she joked.
The best part was watching and listening to the reactions when participants were told to look through the hay, Lawrence said. (Frustrated sighs were common.)
"I like psychology and playing with people's minds," she joked.
Later interviews suggested that the youths and teens in the experiment might have been more prone to aggression due to exposure to violent media, Braget said. This suggests that we should limit the amount of violent media we expose our kids to, she concluded, as not doing so could slant them towards impulsive, aggressive behaviour as adults.
Frequent exposure to violent media shapes our brains towards aggression, Lawrence said.
"It's not so much how our experiment can be applied to society, but how society affects this experiment," she said.
Braget and Lawrence won silver in the senior biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences category and $280 for their efforts.
Visit www.ersf.ca for a list of winners of this year's Edmonton science fair. The Canada-Wide Science Fair runs from May 11 to 18 at the University of Lethbridge.
