Ridgecrest pair best in state

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Burroughs High sophomores Thomas Wooding and Amy Lee were state champions in the Mammalian Biology category.

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Warren Jr. High seventh-grader Irfan Habib smiled proudly displaying the third place medal he earned at the California Science Fair.

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Standard Middle School seventh-grader Lily Denesha got a warm hug from her dad, Doug, after a fourth place finish in the Product Science category.

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2008 state champion, Stockdale High senior Nicholas Okita, returned to the stand to accept a fourth place award in Chemistry.

Burroughs High School sophomores Amy Lee and Thomas Wooding from Ridgecrest topped the list of Kern County students earning awards at the 58th annual California Science Fair which concluded May 19 in Los Angeles. Lee and Wooding, who did very well by earning second place honors at the Kern County Science Fair in March, took their project to the top in the state competition winning in the senior division Mammalian Biology category with their entry, “Lead Bullets Poisoned the Condors, Are Grizzly Bears Next?”

The Ridgecrest winners showed how animals killed by lead bullets were poisoning condors and grizzly bears who fed on their remains. “We simulated a condor and bear stomach, used chemicals to show if poison was present after the introduction of lead and copper, allowed a digestion period of five hours and used filtering paper to determine the results,” Lee said.

Lee and Wooding were the top finishers among 18 Kern County students who earned honors for their mathematical and scientific methodology skills at the California Science Center competition.

Warren Jr. High seventh-grader Irfan Habib’s experimentation with Vitamin C earned a third finish in the junior division Biochemistry/Molecular Biology category. His entry was titled, “Vitamin C Content: Analysis of Food by Titration.”

Standard Middle School seventh-grader Lily Denesha used a tennis racquet, tennis balls, blank explosives and oil field testing equipment for her project, “It’s Shocking,” which was judged fourth in the junior division Product Science category.

Stockdale High Senior Nicholas Okita, who was a state champion last year, was honored again. His senior division Chemistry entry, “The Correlation Between Conductivity and Corrosion Potential in Simulation of an Oil Field Environment” earned a fourth place award. He was also a Society of Petroleum Engineers Superior Technical Achievement Award recipient of $300.

County students also received eight honorable mention awards and six California Science Fair Special Awards.

Kern County had 59 students presenting 55 projects in a field that included 960 of the state’s top middle and senior high school students. Those from Kern who qualified to compete in the California Science Fair scored among the top projects at the March 17 Kern County Science Fair, administered by the Kern County Superintendent of Schools Office.

California Science Fair competitors came from 35 counties, entered projects in 24 categories ranging from aerodynamics/hydrodynamics to zoology, and winners took home a combined total of $50,000 in cash prizes.

Kern County students who received awards at the California Science Fair, their schools and the category they entered include:

First Place — Amy Lee and Thomas Wooding, Burroughs High — Mammalian Biology
Third Place — Irfan Habib, Warren Jr. High — Biochemistry/Molecular Biology
Fourth Place — Lily Denesha, Standard Middle School — Product Science; Nicholas Okita, Stockdale High — Chemistry
Honorable Mention — Michelle Stanley, Tevis Jr. High — Applied Mechanics and Structures; Danielle Behrens, Stockdale Christian School — Chemistry; Clayton Skousen, Desert High — Chemistry; Alexandra Vaughan, Stockdale Elementary — Earth Science; Matthew Nickell, Rio Bravo-Greeley School — Electronics and Electromagnetics; Rohan Sharma, Warren Jr. High — Environmental Science; Mark Canning, Desert High — Physics and Astronomy; Laura Jennings, El Tejon Middle — Plant Biology

California Science Fair 2009 Special Awards

Dr. Ibrahim El-Hefni Achievement in Science Award ($500) — Suevana Ayala, Jefferson Middle; Madeline Atchison, St. Francis Parish and Sarah Stauffer, Jefferson Middle School
Society of Petroleum Engineers Superior Technical Achievement Award ($300) — Nicholas Okita, Stockdale High
Science Buddies Clever Scientist Award ($30) — Darby Adler, Independence Elementary and Shreya Banerjee, Reagan School


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