Newlands Intermediate School Participants in the annual NIWA Science Fair.

This year, 9 students entered their investigations into the NIWA Wellington Science Fair on the 25th of August. NIWA - National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research - holds a science and technology fair every year which thousands of students from the Wellington Region take part in. The fair itself was held over 3 days, from the 24th of August to the 27th of August, but planning for the project started at the end of May this year.

This year the NIWA Prize for best overall exhibit was won by Dominic Holden in Room 6. He is also the winner of six other prizes which were Te Herenga Waka -- Victoria University of Wellington Faculty of Science Prize, First in Class 1, AJ Park, Australasian Corrosion Association, Engineering New Zealand and an iPad. It's a tremendous achievement!

Based on making five styles of bricks using building waste materials, his project was focused on sequestration of carbon to save the environment. The bricks were put through five tests that showed which waste material made the best brick. The waste materials were polystyrene, glass, crumb rubber, and saw dust. Overall the best brick was the cement brick, but out of the waste materials the glass brick was the best closely followed by the polystyrene brick. Newlands Intermediate is very proud of Dominic Holden for his achievements. Ka Pai Dominic for winning and we’ll see you next time!

“If I had advice for anyone else with an interest in science, I’d say ‘go for it’, there’s nothing stopping you; just stay focused, work hard, and it will pay off in the end,” advised Dominic.

Our other competitors put a lot of time and effort into their projects as well. The other participants in the NIWA Science Fair from our school were Ava, Clare, Megan, Jeshna, Pranaya, Khushi, and ourselves Selena and Arya.

Ava’s project was focused on how yoga can help reduce stress. At the end of this experiment the participants said that their weight and blood pressure had improved, but the stress level had gone up due to reasons outside of the control of the study.

Clare and Megan worked together on their science project which was aimed at trying to figure out whether or not dogs affect the health of a river. The river they tested was Belmont Stream located in Seton Nossiter Park in Belmont Gully. Research and tests from this experiment showed that dogs did not affect the health of the river.

Jeshna and Pranaya’s project was based on how different types of music affect your concentration. Upbeat music - Watermelon Sugar, Light Switch and Blinding Lights - had a surprisingly neutral effect on the readers because it could be distracting and also block out outside sounds.

Khushi did her science project on how storm drains are carrying trash to the ocean. She found three different storm drains, measured them and then made a model of them with the measurements halved.

Our project was seeing how swan plants would react to different liquids. We brought 5 swan plants and watered them with different liquids every 1 day. The liquids were tap water, filtered water, salt water, sugar water, and lastly lemon water. We found that nothing really changed when the swan plants were watered with tap and filtered water. Salt water made the plants lose more leaves, sugar water increased the growth of the plants, and lemon water caused the plant to not grow very much.

Overall the science fair was a very fun experience for everyone. “Our favourite part of the fair was looking at everyone else's projects,” said Jeshna and Pranaya. Claire and Megan really enjoyed it and recommend participating in the science fair next year. We hope that next year more students will represent NIS in the fair and bring home more wins for the school.