GRANTS - Every year the annual Grants Local Science and Engineering Fair displays the creativity and discipline of science students in Cibola County. The creativity is expressed in the ideas the students want to explore and the discipline is demonstrated in their adherence to the steps of scientific inquiry.

Carol Nielson points out a procedure used in her experiment determining the protein content of rice. BEACON / DIANE FOWLER

All of the exhibits mounted this past weekend in the gym at St. Teresa's Catholic School explained student science experiments in terms of those steps. Each student display stated the purpose, hypothesis, method and conclusion of the experiment, accompanied by photos or other graphics.

Now in its 49th year, the local science fair is open to all students in the sixth grade and up who attend any school in the county. The Junior Division, which covers grades six through eight, had 45 participants this year and the Senior Division of grades nine through twelve had 60 entrants.

The students posed such interesting questions as can a dog's saliva help heal a human wound, do backyard birds prefer feed high in fat or high in sugar, and what kind of salt contains the most iodine?

These questions may have occurred to the non-scientific folks among us, but the students set out to prove or disprove them.

Rene Smith, who placed first in the chemistry section of the Junior Division, tested the levels of ascorbic acid, or vitamin C, in different types of orange juice. Her hypothesis was that freshly squeezed orange juice would contain the highest level of the vitamin. Using an iodine solution to measure the levels of vitamin C in various forms of orange juice, she concluded that fresh picked and squeezed juice yielded the highest level, frozen juice from concentrate had the second highest level and bottled and canned juice had the least amount of the vitamin. Juice that was stored, preserved or exposed to oxygen lost much of its original vitamin content.

In her dramatically titled exhibit, “The Darkness That Lies Within,” Chelsea Griego studied the effectiveness of various types of mouthwash in killing cavity-causing bacteria in the mouth. Using swabs of Strep Salivaris and Strep Mutans bacteria, she tested four types of mouthwash. Originally hypothesizing that Listerine would kill the most germs, she found that Scope killed the most Strep Mutans bacteria and Crest killed the most Strep Salivaris.

Griego's experiment earned her first place in the Microbiology section of the Junior Division.

Joseph Murrietta placed first in the Earth and Space section in the Senior Division by asking whether gravity plays a role in holding planets and moons in their positions. He used Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation to try to determine if there were any similarities between planets that would contribute to them being pulled away from the Plane of the Ecliptic, which is the apparent path the sun orbits as seen from Earth.

He found that there is a relationship between gravitational attraction and how far the planets or moons lie off the plane.

First place in the Botany section of the Senior Division went to Carol Nielson for her study of the protein content of various varieties of rice to determine genetic relatedness.

After extracting protein from the samples, she electrophoresed them and then compared molecular weight, number of amino acids, and number of DNA base pairs for each sample. She was then able to classify the rice samples based on genetic similarities.

Nielson also won the Arnold Maxwell Award for the best scientific paper in the Senior Division.

Pablo Valdivia took first place in the engineering section of the Senior Division and the Grand Award with an experiment, which attempted to improve the performance of all terrain vehicles by adding “legs” to the wheel configuration. He hypothesized that the legs would allow the vehicle to move effectively on a variety of terrains.

He found that the motion achieved was smooth and the machine was stable, but the power supply didn't last long.

There were many other interesting and inventive displays. Regional competitions will be held March 5-7 at St. Teresa's gym.

Shelby Alexander, a science teacher at Grants High School, Gail Alexander and Mary Savachek organized the event and were helped by volunteer students and parents.

See the complete list of winners in the sidebar.