<\/p>\n
Over the course of the 2014-15 school year, numerous Cortez Middle School students have toiled in classrooms and at home and created science projects of the highest quality.<\/p>\n
Now, thanks to that hard work, 11 talented students have qualified for the 60th Annual Colorado Science and Engineering Fair, which will be held at Colorado State University, April 9-11.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had 250 students work on projects this year,\u201d said CMS science teacher Gary Livick. \u201cOur teachers made a concerted effort to focus on science fair. We all gave a little class time for it and I think that made a big difference.<\/p>\n
To qualify for the Colorado state fair, students had to first place well at the CMS science fair, which was held in Cortez on Jan. 15.<\/p>\n
Forty-nine of the 181 projects presented at the CMS fair were selected to move on to the regional fair, which was held in Durango on March 5. Of those 49 projects, five individual projects, and two team projects placed in the top-three and advanced to state.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was our best year,\u201d said Livick. \u201cThe most students that I ever remember qualifying for state prior to this year were three or four.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the students that qualified for state were 6th graders Emma Jones, Samantha King and Aubree Sharp, whose project examining whether bacteria found on the leaves of bean plants aided in the growth of wheat grass placed first overall in the team category.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe took bacteria from a bean plant and we soaked that in water,\u201d Jones said. \u201cWe put that water on wheat grass and we put other types of water on the grass and we measured which water would create the healthiest grass.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones, King and Sharp found that the water containing bacteria from the bean plants did aid in the grass\u2019s growth and all three students expressed satisfaction with their project\u2019s results.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to find a chemical substance that was all natural and would keep my lawn green and healthy and we did that,\u201d said King.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Our project) required a lot of teamwork and I think it made us better friends,\u201d added Sharp.<\/p>\n
Other students qualifying for state included Kayden Peabody, who placed first in the Energy and Transportation category, Halle Carver, who placed first in the Health Science category, Dimery Plewe, who placed second in the Behavioral and Social Sciences category, Mandy McAfee, who placed second in the Energy and Transportation category and Kale Hall, who placed third in the Behavioral and Social Sciences category.<\/p>\n
Noah Rainer and Megan Harmon also earned a trip to state by placing third in the team category.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took a lot of community support to put on our fair here and we\u2019ve had about 20 high school honors students come over and help,\u201d Livick said. \u201cEvery Friday, we were soldering, wiring planting, mixing fertilizer and wiring solar panels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Individuals and teams that place at the top of the state science fair will advance to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, which will be held in Pittsburgh, Pa., May 10-15.<\/p>\n
\u201cCompetition at the state fair is always tough,\u201d said Livick. \u201cWe\u2019ve never had a student from CMS advance to the International Science fair, but we\u2019re going to go to state, have fun and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
11 Cortez Middle School students advance to state science fair<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":113937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-113936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113936"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=113936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}