Bartlesville, Grove students win top awards at state science fair

Students from Bartlesville High School and Grove Middle School won the top awards March 31 at the Oklahoma State Science and Engineering Fair held annually at East Central University. Approximately 250 projects were vying for cash prizes and other awards.

The $500 Best of Fair Award in the senior high division went to Melissa Carvell, a sophomore at Bartlesville High School, for her research project on "Science Thwarts Insurgents: Improvements in Ceramic Armor Systems Design Using Composites for Tensile Reinforcement in Ceramic Plates."

Gregorye' Epperson, an 8th grade student at Grove Middle School, won the $500 Best of Fair Award in the junior high division for a project on "Tis' the Season: A Toxicity Study of Selected Coniferous Tree Needle Leachate from Four Seasons on Freshwater Invertebrates."

Outstanding exhibits won trips to the International Science and Engineering Fair in May in Albuquerque, N.M., for Alex McNeely, a junior at Miami High School, and the team of Sara Melton and Ashlyn Reynolds, seniors at Grove High School.

McNeely did research on "Evaluating the Effects of Selected Antibiotics on Motility and Adherence in E. coli and Pseudomonas fluorescens." Melton and Reynolds' team project was titled "The Skinny on Diet Pills: Testing four prescription appetite suppressants on the toxicity and heart rate of various crustaceans."

School team trophies and $150 cash awards were presented to Moore High School for Division I, grades 10-12, and Grove Public Schools for Division II, grades 7-9.

The students who competed in the 10 categories in the state competition, which has been held at ECU for 35 years, were top winners earlier at one of nine regional fairs.