Colton Lewis, Patrick McCormick and Marisa Luciano from St.Stephen’s Catholic School won their divisions in the State Science Fair.
More than 60,000 middle school students from public, private, charter and magnet schools competed in science fairs around Florida last month. St. Stephen Catholic School on Boyette Rd. in Riverview, had outstanding success this year in competing at the District and State level Science, Technology, Math and Engineering Fairs.
Marisa Luciano, seventh grade, Colton Lewis, sixth grade and Patrick McCormick, sixth grade, each won their division at the District Science Fair.
Luciano won first place in Jr. Medicine and Health with “Is Dance A Sport?” Lewis won first place in Jr. Physics with “Magnets in Charge,” and McCormick won first place in Jr. Computer Science with “Animation Calculation”.
Under the guidance of science teacher, Caryl Nolan, the students were extremely successful with their projects with data, graphs, research paper and results, all with the application of the scientific process.
Lewis also won the Nelda Mason Memorial Award for the most outstanding hands on project.
The three students became members of “Team Hillsborough”, along with other district winners and competed at the largest academic contest of the state. Luciano wowed the judges with her project where she provided data for the heart rate and using the “talk test” while subjects were dancing, to show that indeed dance should be considered a sport.
Lewis won fourth place in the largest category of Jr. Physics and Astronomy combined. Using two electromagnets that he built, testing the ability in the strength of the lifting powers using five different voltages.
McCormick won first place in Jr. Computer Science. He created a stop motion animation for students to determine at what point the video went from choppy to smooth. He proved his hypothesis that at 20 frames per second, the video appeared smooth. He was one of the select few nominated to compete in Broadcom Master competition in Washington D.C.
St. Stephen Catholic School has approximately 300 students. For more information about the school, visit www.ststephencatholicschool.org.
