Our esteemed chair, Courtney Spivey, and Frank Parris judged the 2009 North Alabama Regional Science Fair (NARSEF) March 5th for IEEE special awards. Frank presented our awards - framed certificates and a mail-in form for a $100 US savings bond - to these recipients the following evening:
Junior Division
EN132 - Charles Cook, Athens Bible School - "Maze Bot," a robotics project designed to program a robot to navigate a maze using multiple sensors.
EN146 - Parker Rowley, Westminster Christian Academy - "Does Humidity Affect Capacitance?" an investigation of how humidity affects the amount of stored static charge in a leyden jar.
EN149 - Nick Simerly, Westminster Christian Academy - "Can You Trust Your Home Alarm System?" a project to investigate ways to add intelligent discrimination to passive infrared motion detection systems in order to eliminate false positive detections / alerts.
MC173 - Joshua Hawkins, Covenant Christian Academy - "Look Mom! No Wires! 2: A Study of Signal Strength with Shaped and Wire Mesh Reflectors on a Wireless Router," ...the title describes it well. Joshua was was of our recipients last year, and built on his earlier project by testing new, different shapes and types of reflectors. As it turns out, a Pringles can gave excellent results...
Senior Division
CS290 - Adam Eichelkraut, Catholic High School - "A Comparison of 'Swarm Intelligence' Algorithms Using Video Game Technology," a computer programming project to investigate ant phenome responses to their search for food. Adam was also a former IEEE award recipient, and built on his earlier project with a more sophisticated algorithmic approach to his investigation.
CS292 - Marcel Girgis, Bob Jones High School - "An Iterative Approach to Software Development," development of a computer game development environment that allows both iterative game component development as well as progressive maturity of the development environment for ease of game design.
ET332 - Nathan Tinker, Covenant Christian Academy - "Investigation of the Technologies Enabling a Solar Stirling Renewable Power System," also a former IEEE winner, he expanded his earlier research by performing large-scale experiments with solar concentrators at MSFC using his stirling engine.
ST389 - Bethany Johnson & Ashley Vechinski, Life Christian Academy - "Stylometric 'Fingerprinting': A Computerized Approach to Author Identification," a software analysis tool that, using a variety of metrics, can determine whether the author of a written composition is the "true" author, or if they plagarized.
As always, it was a lot of fun... there were so many interesting and great projects to choose from it wasn't easy! Three of our IEEE winners were also selected as NARSEF Grand Award Winners to participate in the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Reno, Nevada, in May - Marcel Girgis, Nathan Tinker, and Bethany Johnson / Ashley Vechinski. Looking forward to ACTE and the State science fair in April!
Frank
Frank Parris
IEEE Huntsville Section
Chairman, Educational Activities
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| EN132 - Charles Cook, Athens Bible School - "Maze Bot" | EN146 - Parker Rowley, Westminster Christian Academy - "Does Humidity Affect Capacitance?" |
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| EN149 - Nick Simerly, Westminster Christian Academy - "Can You Trust Your Home Alarm System?" | MC173 - Joshua Hawkins, Covenant Christian Academy - "Look Mom! No Wires! 2: A Study of Signal Strength with Shaped and Wire Mesh Reflectors on a Wireless Router" |
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| CS290 - Adam Eichelkraut, Catholic High School - "A Comparison of 'Swarm Intelligence' Algorithms Using Video Game Technology" | CS292 - Marcel Girgis, Bob Jones High School - "An Iterative Approach to Software Development" |
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| ET332 - Nathan Tinker, Covenant Christian Academy - "Investigation of the Technologies Enabling a Solar Stirling Renewable Power System" | ST389 - Bethany Johnson & Ashley Vechinski, Life Christian Academy - "Stylometric 'Fingerprinting': A Computerized Approach to Author Identification" |