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By Rama K. Ramaswamy
On Wednesday, March 16, the Upham School held its Invention Convention, emphasizing Wellesley Public School’s four C’s: communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking.
“There were so many amazing projects and everyone followed the scientific method,” Upham Invention Convention Co-Chairs Beth Ann Willett and Leah Hutnick said. “We had a record 101 kids sign up this year and the mystery guests were impressed by all of them.”
All of Upham’s STEAM inventors were given a medal to take home and also got to speak with five mystery guests about their project: Carolyn S. Collins, PK-5 Science Coordinator; David Jackson, Wellesley Middle School science teacher and science Olympiad coach; Brian Finn, Wellesley Middle School technology teacher and robotics coach; Kathleen Derian, Wellesley Middle School science teacher; and Anshul Chadda, a Fiske parent and their Science Fair Chair.
Upham Invention Convention participants were told to ask a question, research their topic, state their hypothesis, test their hypothesis, analyze their data and report their results.
Kindergarteners Henry Dube, Tate Gerhart and Will Nichols created a project that determined the best way to clean a penny with easy to find household products.
Katherine Notari described her project as, “I will hunt M&M’s in different colored Skittle habitats to look at how camouflage can help prey survive.”
Third graders Eliana Bertucci and Alexa Pekowitz combined engineering and art to build an “art-bot”, an art-making robot. Fifth graders projects demonstrated a wide range of expertise, including Maddie Merowtz and Amira Chapman testing the strength of eggshells by walking across two 12-packs of eggs with flat, cardboard shoes.
Kaitlyn Willett, Lily Burnham and Julia Pekowitz worked on discovering how temperature influenced bread with yeast rising and Greg Nelson, who attached Hi-Chews to his drone to test “how much weight a drone can carry.”
With 101 Upham student participants and approximately 56 projects, along with five mystery guests, Upham’s gym was a very lively place.
“I used to think science was boring and really hard but now I know that it can be really cool. I liked the Lego experiment the best,” said a second grader named Jenna.
“Can we do that again, tomorrow but with a new project?” First grader Bella Behrend asked. “And I am totally going to be a scientist.”
Added Bella’s older brother Dean, a fifth grader, "that was the best time I've ever had."
If participants wish to donate their project posters, Willett plans to save them to then pull out later to display at town-wide Wellesley STEM Expo 2017.
Rama K. Ramaswamy writes for Hometown Weekly. She can be reached at news@hometownweekly.net.
