Riverside Unified School District’s generation of young geniuses will be participating in the Science and Engineering fair this weekend. The Science and Engineering Fair is a competition of science and engineering projects designed, developed, and displayed by students in grades 4 through 12. This fair gives many students time to shine, to share and discuss their knowledge, their skills, and the opportunity to network with other like-minded individuals. The Riverside County Science and Engineering Fair is affiliated with and supported by the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).
There will be 29 participating districts and charter private schools, totaling to 519 students and 361 total science and engineering projects coming together at the Riverside Convention Center. With 40 submissions pertaining to chemistry, these students will be displaying their knowledge on everything they know. From assessing soil that was involved in forensic investigations crime scenes to analyzing the effects on social media relating to teen depression.
Don’t be fooled by the age of these participants, some are ready to take on the discussion of how marginalized communities are treated in comparison to higher income communities; with projects titled “Water Quality in High vs. Low Income Neighborhoods.” and other extremely thought provoking experiments titled, “Spinning Towards Sustainability: Revolutionizing the Salton Sea’s Direct Lithium Extraction With Novel Geothermal Brine Centrifugation” These projects are certainly hard to miss.
Judgment day for the student engineers will be held on Friday March 1, 2024. Experienced judges will critique and provide constructive criticism when looking for quality of presentation, content clarity and originality. While the public is not allowed to participate on judgment day, free admission will be granted on Saturday March 2, for everyone to enjoy. The awards ceremony will take place publicly on Saturday March 2 at noon. Gold and silver medals will be awarded for the winners.
19 categories will be discussed and displayed in 3 separate grade divisions. The 4/5 division will be competing with grades 4th and 5th submitting 115 science projects. The junior division containing middle school grade levels will be displaying 142 projects. Lastly the senior division containing high school grade levels will be contributing with 104 science and engineering projects. The junior and senior division winners have the opportunity to advance at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering (ISEF) Fair as well as the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge competition, to be held May 11-17, 2024 in Los Angeles.
Be sure to come and support our local youth in their scholastic endeavors! It is imperative that we, as a community show up for our youth, as it only benefits them in the future. Who knows, one day we might see the same faces participating in our local engineering fair on the news because they might have made a significant discovery in the science community. All of our great, renowned geniuses like Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Marie Curie and Nikola Tesla were all curious children once, too!
