Weird Science

It is that time of the year again...Science Fair time. Well, that is a relative term. Different schools do it at different times, but it was our time again. This is our fourth project to come out of the Cazier home. June had two, Robyn had one, and now it is Ivory's turn.

Ivory knew what she wanted to do ages ago. She wanted to dye her hair. So she fashioned a project that would allow her to do that. (Sneaky little thing.) She decided to see if vitamins would help her hair grow faster. The only real problem with this project was time. She dyed a piece of her hair and let it grow for three weeks to test her normal hair growth rate.

Then she dyed another piece and started taking vitamins. We had several days at Kellie's where we quickly stepped in to get a piece dyed. (Don't know what we would have done without you Kellie.)

After three weeks on vitamin C, we waited three days to clear out her system, then we dyed the last piece and Ivory took vitamin B12. We didn't even have enough time to finish three weeks on this vitamin. We had to guesstimate our results with the growth we already had. Now Ivory has three stripes in her hair. Two blond ones and one red one, although the red is really hard to see against the brown.

Next up, the board. Ivory came up with a great idea for her title. She called it 'What Vitamins Did Rapunzel Take?' because Rapunzel had such long hair. I had an idea to put hair all around the edge of her board. Ivory loved that idea. Ivory of course did all the graphs and explanations, but when she put it on the board, it didn't seem to fill up enough space. She thought it would be fun to paint Rapunzel on the board somewhere, so she went to our resident artist for help. Robyn was more than happy to contribute and I think the finished product turned out amazing.

Ivory was so happy with her board. She knew she was going to draw a crowd.

I was very impressed with Robyn's paintings. She did them simply by looking at a picture on my phone.

Science fair day was really fun. Ivory said she had people at her board crowded around the entire time. Some were just there to view the pictures, but many asked insightful questions. Ivory's conclusion was that vitamin C helped hair grow the fastest. She is sad she didn't get to try more vitamins in the experiment. And she admitted that she didn't track her diet, so there were probably other things that factored into the growth. Either way, her hair grew faster while taking vitamins than during the control, so if you want your hair to grow faster, you might consider a vitamin.

Growth in 3 weeks:

Vitamin C - 10 mm
Vitamin B12 - 9 mm
No vitamin - 7 mm

Ivory was next to her friend Ember. They had a good time chatting when they weren't busy explaining their data.

There were some cool projects interspersed with some of the regular ideas. I liked the kid with the board entitled 'Technology is the Best Medicine'. He had people put their foot in a bucket of ice and see how long they could keep it there. Then they did the same thing while playing a video game. The distraction helped them keep their foot in the ice longer. Cool idea.

My favorite board was Jane's. She naturally dyed different types of yarn. It was so cool to see how the different yarn picked up the colors. And it was interesting the different natural ingredients she used as dyes. I was super impressed with her presentation. She knit all her dyed yarn into little circles. It was the bomb.

It was no surprise to me that Jane moved on to the next level of competition. In fact, so did Ivory. That is pretty cool since both her sisters went to district before. I'm proud of Ivory for her work on this project and it will be fun to see all the projects at district. Until then...