Science Fair

The girls participated in our school's science fair a few weeks ago. Sadly, only they went as the rest of us were working, at home with sleeping children, or at a church "obligation".

Friends of ours kept an eye on them for us. The girls did great!!

Truthfully, I still don't get the point of  a lot of these science projects. Beans's project was to discover what the best temperature was for a Borax mix to crystalise. Why!? Is there a benefit to this? I asked her about this a few times. Her only response was that it was the most fun sounding project. Any guesses as to at which temperature the crystals grew best?

Peach's made a little more sense for me. I'll attach part of her project simply because it's intriguing.

When I first found this project, I played the ringtone and asked my family members if they could hear it. My siblings, age 15, 11, and 8 could hear it but my parents could not. It intrigued me that one sound could be heard by younger people, but not older people. I wanted to find out if it was true for all people and why. Most people over the age of twenty-five will not be able to hear the sound. If a person is over the age of twenty-five and can hear the sound they will not have been exposed to a lot of noise throughout their life. Some people who cannot hear the sound may still experience a slight ringing of the ears.

In 2005 a British inventor designed a product that would stop teens from loitering on storefronts. It played a high frequency sound that would annoy the teens but would not affect adult customers. The product was called “The Mosquito”.

Some creative teens living in the same town as the inventor of “The Mosquito” took the noise and used it for their own purposes. They converted it into a ringtone so that they could let their cell phones ring in class and their teachers would not be able to hear it. They called the ringtone “The Teen Buzz”. It quickly spread to North America and has now been heard by millions of people.

The reason most adults cannot hear the ringtone is because they have age related hearing loss called Presbycusis. At around age twenty, people lose the ability to hear high frequency sounds. This condition progressively gets worse as a person grows older.

You can try the experiment for yourself and let us know if you hear it. You need to go to the bottom of this page and then click on the MP3 or WAV link in number 15. It will come up with a new page which will make the sound (immediately) -- provided you can hear it of course :o).

Peach even won an award for having the most thorough experiment.

Still disappointed :o).

Squirt didn't attend and was very disappointed not to be able to go, but it was not mandatory for her grade. She did do really well on her project too though!