Eight earn first-place honors

WESTFALL n Ten Delaware Valley High School students attended the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science State Competition at Penn State Main Campus, May 20 to 22. Students made ten-minute presentations that explained their long-term projects and results. First-place honors went to: Sarah Gilmour, ninth grade, for “Effect of Different Light Spectrums on Plants”; Caitlin Anderson, ninth grade, for “Elevation’s Effect on Temperature and Precipitation”; Shawn Chen, tenth grade, for “Using Solubility to Determine Enthalpy and Entropy”; Margarita Polyak, eleventh grade, for “Probability of Survival”; Anthony Testino, eleventh grade, for “The Art Gallery Problem”; Shannon Haberzettl, twelfth grade, for “Dominating Factors that Influence Handwriting Characteristics”; Megan Welker, twelfth grade, for “Genetic Mapping of Fruit Flies Accurately by Base Pair”; and Georgiy Polyak, twelfth grade, perseverance award for three years of participation and first place, “Countering the Effects of Acid Rain.” Second-place awards went to: Ashley Stryker, tenth grade, for “Do Ashes Effect the Growth of Raphanos sativus”; and Samantha Mascia, eleventh grade, for “The Accuracy of Ultrasound.” The ten students who competed at the state competition earlier received first place at the regional competition March 12 at King’s College, Wilkes Barre: Ashley Stryker in Ecology; Margarita Polyak and Anthony Testino in Mathematics; Samantha Mascia and Megan Welker in Biology; Shawn Chen in Chemistry; Caitlin Anderson and Georgiy Polyak in Earth/Space Science, Shannon Haberzettl in Behavioral/Psychology, and Sarah Gilmour in Botany.