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Seeing Red Brings Home Gold for AHS Freshman

Posted on: Monday, 13 March 2006, 15:00 CST

By Jim Troyer, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.

Mar. 13--An Austin High School science star burned brightly at the South Central/Southwest Minnesota Regional Science & Engineering Fair at Minnesota State University, Mankato, earlier this month.

Freshman John Register, 15, came away with seven awards, including a NorAm/Minnegasco Foundation Grant for most outstanding research paper and most outstanding individual project in botany.

He also won the 2006 Regional Ricoh Sustainable Development Award and the Naval Science Award of the Office of Naval Research.

Register's project investigated the effect of color in mulch on the temperature of soil in the growing of tomatoes.

"Seeing Red," won awards at the Austin Science Fair on Jan. 21 at Austin High School and moved him into the regional competition March 4 in Mankato.

While there were 78 projects that involved 99 Austin students in first through eighth grades at the January fair, his was the only one in the senior division for high schoolers.

He advances to the 69th annual Minnesota State Science Fair April 2-4 and was selected to attend an International Science Fair in Indianapolis in May.

Register has participated in a long string of science fairs. He did not hesitate when asked how he got started on that track: "Mom," he said.

His mother, Sue, admitted as much. "I told him he should do a science fair project when he was in the third grade."

"He's a smart kid, so I always funneled him into projects that are good," she said. That doesn't necessarily mean science, as long as the activity is something worthwhile, she added. "He gets one hour for video games on Friday."

Except for one year when he was working on an Eagle Scout award, he has completed a science project every year.

Register said he got started with tomatoes because he is from a family of farmers who always started their tomato plants from seeds in the basement.

He got the idea for the project while going through seed catalogs that included advertisements for mulch. The question for scientific inquiry became "does the color of the mulch make a difference?"

"It does," he concluded.

Black and red mulch was used for two seasons, and the young scientist found that black mulch is the better choice in cool, wet years and red is better for hot, dry years.

"The trouble is," he admitted, "is that you can't predict what kind of a season you're going to have."

Jim Troyer is a freelance writer who lives in Austin.

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Source: Post-Bulletin

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