The winners of the Santa Barbara Science and Engineering Honest current their faculty zone outcomes

Middle and high school students who received the highest honors at the annual Santa Barbara County’s Science Fair signed up on Zoom Wednesday afternoon.

One by one, the students explained their experiments in detail and answered questions.

Her projects spanned a variety of topics, from how to hit a golf ball the furthest to analyzing the effects of adjusting the onset time of the voice on the perception of the pair of English consonants.

The Santa Barbara Science and Technology Council – a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the interaction between people involved in engineering and science activities in Santa Barbara County – hosted the free online event that featured the department and the best show- Winners of the annual County Science and Engineering Fair were presented.

Wednesday’s event recognized a handful of students from the Santa Barbara County area and their mentors as they prepare to attend California’s 70th annual science and technology fair next month. This year’s state fair will take place online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the organizers of the event, the district’s science and engineering fair is open to students in grades 7 to 12 who live in the district or attend a public or private school in the district. Home students aged 12 to 18 can also participate.

Held online in early March, the County Fair qualified 17 winners to attend the state Science and Engineering Fair and awarded prizes of more than $ 2,000, according to SBCSF.

Click here for a full list of county students eligible to attend the 2021 California Science and Engineering Fair.

The top winners of the County Science Fair presented their projects, experimental procedures, results, explanations of the data results and inspirations for their project. The event provided valuable practice for each student ahead of the California Science Fair.

“We would like to congratulate them on their efforts and prepare them for assessment at the state fair,” said Yvonne DeGraw, Chair of the SEC program.

Junior High Best in Division Award Winner

»Goleta Valley Junior High School student Gabriele Scussat in the Life Sciences Department for his project“ Effects of Ecological Restoration on Wildlife in the Open Space of the Goleta North Campus ”.

Scussat and the other attendees made a formal presentation at the event.

“My project has highlighted some interesting results,” said Scussat.

»Jonathan Yang, student of the Goleta Valley Junior High School in the science department, for his project” How to hit the golf ball as far as possible (projectile movement) “.

Dos Pueblos High School student Gavin Jimerson discusses his project for the Santa Barbara County Science Fair during an online presentation Wednesday. His project looked like: “Fighting fires with AI: machine learning to predict the causes and consequences of forest fires.” (Photo by Brooke Holland / Noozhawk)

“I play golf, so I wanted to see how to hit the golf ball the furthest,” said the seventh grader. “To do this, I did some research.”

Senior High Best in Division Award Winner

»Cate student Timothy Zhang in the Department of Life Sciences for his project“ Heart rate analysis with face tracking, distance photoplethysmography and deep learning ”.

“The goal is a quick, non-contact preliminary health diagnosis,” said Zhang. “It was a COVID-inspired project.”

»Dos Pueblos High School student Gavin Jimerson in the physics department for his project” Fighting fires with AI: Machine learning to predict the causes and consequences of forest fires “.

“Forest fires are both a local and a global problem,” said Jimerson.

Julian Nott Award for Scientific Creativity

»Goleta Valley Junior High School student Eamon Gordon received the Julian Nott Award for Scientific Creativity for his project” Assessing the Effect of VOT on the Perception of English Consonants “.

Goleta Valley Junior High School student Eamon Gordon received the Julian Nott Award for Scientific Creativity for his project “Assessing the Effect of VOT on English Consonant Perception”. (Photo by Brooke Holland / Noozhawk)

“I chose to study VOT (Voice Onset Time) because it is important to communicate distinctions between words that otherwise sound identical,” said Gordon.

The SEC award is presented in recognition and memory of the late Julian Nott of Santa Barbara, who served in the SEC and is recognized as the founder of the modern scientific balloon movement. Nott died in 2019.

The award recognizes a creative and ambitious project that, according to the organizers, deals with a novel scientific question. The Julian Nott Award is new this year.

The SEC also presented winners in the divisions with certificates and trophies, and each student receives a cash award of $ 100.

Wednesday’s program was sponsored in part by Community West Bank, Bengal Engineering, and Toyon Research Corporation.

“Great work from everyone,” said SEC Co-President Tim Murphy. “Great work from students, teachers, parents and counselors.”

In addition to hosting activities to promote public awareness of science, the SEC awards scholarships to local students who are pursuing a major in physics, science, chemistry, engineering, or math and who, according to the organization, require financial support for college.

– Noozhawk employee Brooke Holland can be reached at (JavaScript must be activated in order to be able to display this e-mail address.). Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews, and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.

Jonathan Yang, a student at Goleta Valley Junior High School, won the science department for his project “How to Hit the Golf Ball As Far As You Can (Projectile Movement)”. (Photo by Brooke Holland / Noozhawk)