Science Shines at Hanover Fair

By ANDREW LIGHTMAN

53rd annual event

HANOVER

Ivan Pavlov conditioned his dog to salivate at the sound of a bell. Sarah Coffey trained her dog to sit whenever her cell phone rings.

The sophomore at Hanover High School said she took a page out of Pavlov’s book when she tried to confirm his theory on her Labrador retriever, Bruschi, for the school science fair.

Thursday’s fair was the school’s 53rd annual, said Principal Harvey Brooks.

In all, more than 100 students presented 91 projects for judging, with the top few finishers earning a spot in the South Shore Regional Science Fair on March 15.

The winners from Hanover were not announced before deadline on Thursday.

Students in grades 9-12 were invited to participate, said chemistry teacher Kenneth Decie. They have been working on their projects since September.

“We told them to pick something they are interested in,” Decie said. “We let them use their imaginations and run with it.”

Unable to measure her dog’s saliva, as Pavlov did in the late 1800s, Coffey played her cell phone ring as she told Bruschi to sit. Over time, she said, Bruschi associated the ring with the command to sit.

The conditioned response could be used by the deaf, she said, who may be unable to train their dogs with vocal commands.

In his science project titled “Does my guitar gently weep?” Mark Stearns tested to see if age affected the quality of a guitar string. In his project, he used a computer to analyze the sound and measure for unwanted overtones. Stearns discovered that newer strings produce fewer overtones.

Freshman Jonathan Terry drew a lot of buzz from teachers and judges at the fair, when he built a device to measure how well an object can absorb or reflect sound waves.

He built the standing wave tube using PVC pipes, plywood and a steel backing. Connected to a speaker, amplifiers and a computer, Terry measured the waves and charted how well different materials, such as foam and rubber, absorbed the sounds at different frequencies.

“I saw something online about it, and I thought it would be cool,” he said.

Andrew Lightman may be reached at alightman@ledger.com.

Originally published by By ANDREW LIGHTMAN, The Patriot Ledger.

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