March 10, 2003 – Wednesday, March 12, will mark the opening of the Good Hope School's Science and Engineering Fair. The students are surely doing it by the numbers: 144 Good Hope students will present 109 projects to compete for more than 30 prizes in 12 categories.
Good Hope's fair is an Intel International Science and Engineering Fair affiliate, making it the only affiliated science fair in the Virgin Islands. Intel is providing some cash prizes, and the top four students will go to the Intel international fair in Cleveland, Ohio, in May, where they will compete with the best student scientists in the world.
The Science Fair projects began in September, when students made their topic choices. Each project consists of an experiment, a written research paper documenting the topic, and an oral presentation with visual displays at the fair.
"Students participating in the Science Fair learn long-term time management skills, as well as use of the scientific method, to understand more about how the world around us works," said Jane Coles, an upper school teacher at Good Hope and the fair coordinator. "They also learn that real science is not as neat and tidy as it appears in textbooks. There were many false starts and dead-ends before their projects were finished. Each question the students answered raised ten more."
The Good Hope School Science Fair will be held in the school's campus center and will be open to the public Wednesday, March 12, from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Thursday, March 13, from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.
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