Unusual subject earns science student national shot

Despite his high voice, Zach Elgood doesn't initially sound like a kid when he talks about the science fair project that recently earned him a trip to the nationals in Nova Scotia.

"I'm using isotopes to look at where methane comes from in human methane," said Elgood, 13, a Grade 7 student in the enrichment program at Courtland Avenue Public School.

Um, human methane?

"Farts," clarified Elgood.

But Elgood's project is no juvenile joke. The proof is in the fact he's one of just four Waterloo Region students who will be advancing to the nationals after the Waterloo-Wellington Science and Engineering Fair held in Kitchener last week. Some 240 students from Grades 7 to 12 participated.

Elgood also won awards for the best project in physical science and for the best presentation, despite being up against high school students for both those awards. As well, he won the junior category of the Sir Isaac Newton Award, a University of Waterloo-sponsored award for the best projects involving physics.

The New Hamburg boy was intrigued when he read about a research scientist measuring carbon dioxide in a cave who wondered if he was contaminating his samples by farting.

He also wondered how much of the methane contributing to global warming could be blamed on flatulence. He decided he could help answer those questions by figuring out the isotope range, or fingerprint, of what he calls human methane.

Chemical elements are distinguished from each other by the number of protons they have, but can differ in the number of neutrons, which affects their atomic weight. Different forms of the same element are called isotopes.

"Once you've figured out the ranges, you can figure out what type of methane the sample is," Elgood said.

To collect his samples, he needed some help. His dad, a University of Waterloo technician, let him borrow some equipment. Then his father, mother and little brother -- well -- farted.

"You hold (a syringe) there, right where the person is about to release human methane, you open the syringe and suck up the gas," explained Elgood.

"Then you would take this sucked-up gas and insert it into the top of a bottle and since the bottle is a vacuum it sucks up the gas from the tube."

Elgood then took his samples to the University of Waterloo, put them through machines that allowed him to figure out the isotope range of the farts.

Methane from other sources, such as bogs or cows, would have different isotopic fingerprints, Elgood said.

Although not really part of his project, Elgood has also learned different people produce different concentrations of methane, mostly due to what they eat.

Foods that produce a lot of methane include asparagus, brussels sprouts, broccoli, apples, pears and -- no surprise -- beans, Elgood said.

In his family, his mother, a vegetarian, produced the most methane and his brother, a picky eater, produced the least. But actually, humans don't really produce a lot of methane compared to other sources, Elgood said.

The award for the best project in the fair went to Mihail Buse and Peter Wawzonek, Grade 12 students at St. John's-Kilmarnock School, a private school near Breslau. The pair of 17-year-olds also got the best-in-category award for engineering and will be heading to the nationals in May.

Their project is about ergonomics in an auto manufacturing plant.

Buse's father is a manager at the Toyota plant in Cambridge and still has carpal tunnel syndrome from when he was on the line.

To test the stress factory work causes on the body, Buse and Wawzonek studied videos of the Toyota assembly line and set up a similar environment inside Burlington-based Stak Industries, which manufactures assembly-line equipment, including for Toyota.

The pair attached electrodes to different muscle groups and pushed, pulled and rotated heavy weights around on a track-based trolley system.

The electrodes measured how hard their muscles worked.

They tested themselves using a power trolley and a manual one, tried holding the handles at different heights and using gloves or their bare hands.

They concluded the single variable that had the most effect on their bodies was the use of a back belt.

Stak Industries, which manufactures the power trolleys the pair used, is now interested in publishing their findings, Buse said.

Eddie Kim, 14, a Grade 9 student at Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute, is heading to the nationals for the second year in a row after winning the Sir Isaac Newton Award in the intermediate category.

He used a computer program to simulate card shuffling and analyzed how many shuffles it would take to achieve a random order.

He can't wait to head off to the nationals, which go on for a week. He had a great time last year.

"It was a really good learning experience in my opinion," said Kim. "I met a lot of cool people there."