Students competed at the Dallas Regional Science and Engineering Fair (DRSEF) held on Feb 28., presenting projects across multiple fields, including biomedical engineering, mathematics and material science. All of whom participated came home with awards, where two students advanced to state and international competitions.
Senior Jahnavi Sharma, president of science fair club, did not compete in this year’s science fair. But with placing third last year at state and with years of knowledge about the process, Sharma guided students for this year’s competition.
“The students absolutely blew me away with how creative their projects were, [and] how high the technical depth was,” Sharma said. “Seeing Yassin [Ali] win the same placement [in the] same category as me made me proud of [our school for] winning a very competitive category two years in a row.”
As Sharma mentored students, she was able to reflect on her experience from last year.
“The biggest thing I learned was if you truly fall in love with your project, all the awards come secondary to that,” Sharma said. “When I let loose and stopped caring about it for one year, everything I imagined came my way.”
Sophomore Vidhi Desai is an example of this.
By placing first in her category and as a grand prize runner-up, Desai will advance to the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair that will be held in May in Phoenix. Her project was over prime numbers and factorizations, specifically fractal-type structures associated with the Riemann Xi-Function.
“I’m into fractals because they’re really cool structures,” Desai said. “I’m also into prime numbers [and even] used to play this game where you just count prime numbers.”
Desai spent months developing her idea, working out the math, formalizing proofs and writing her paper. One of the challenges she faced was in developing her idea.
“The biggest [challenge] was that [my project] is very abstract,” Desai said. “[At first,] I was looking at developing an actual fractal type structure, but that’s not possible with the analytic data given. So, I pivoted and started working on an invariant set exhibiting fractal behavior.”
Sophomore Yorika Ohashi also experienced challenges when working on her project — one focused on the cross base empirical analysis of reciprocal decimal expansions — specifically when it came to managing both the research and presentation portion of the competition.
“[My] presentation wasn’t very strong because I went down [a] rabbit hole,” Ohashi said. “It’s kind of like art — there’s no end to the art project. I always wanted to add more, [and that] influenced the overall structure of my presentation.”
Ohashi’s project was to research which base number system was the best to work with in applications like engineering.
“I initially got the idea from a YouTube video or movie where this person was nervous during a test, and they [were] reciting the numbers of pi to ground themselves,.” Ohashi said. “I wanted to do that too, but I didn’t want to memorize the digits of pi, so I repeated the same number over and over again. I [was] like, what type of numbers do this?”
Throughout her time participating in the fair, she gained new insight into the science field and even learned more about herself.
“I think the best part about the science fair is putting yourself out there,” Ohashi said. “Even if you don’t do very well at the presentation itself, it gives you a new perspective from the judges to work with in the future.”
For information and inquiries about Science Fair club, contact [email protected].
