Twelve Mt. Hope High School students received accolades from the recent RI Science and Engineering Fair, which took place on March 12 and 13, including two junior students whose projects received Best in Fair mentions among all entrants for their extensively researched and executed projects.

“These students exemplified the tremendous effort put into the virtual science fair this year, along with the outstanding mentoring by our STEM Department,” said Joseph Koger, Mt. Hope science teacher. “Congratulations to all our students and science teachers!”

Winning projects included a range of topics, from identifying signs of oil spillage in local waters, to examining which masks worked best at preventing the spread of Covid, and observing microorganisms to explore the effects of climate change.

Gwenyth Tucker, a junior, won Best in Fair for her extensive research into the effects of artificial sugars on gut bacteria. She was able to show that ingestion of artificial sweeteners, such as Stevia, were problematic in how they affected the gut biome and caused particularly notable issues for people with existing debilitating illnesses, such as diabetes.

Fellow junior Ben Rozea also got a Best in Fair nod for creating a cloud-based system that could identify unique markers within smart phone Bluetooth chips in order to track the movement of larges crowds of people within confined spaces — anonymously. The experimental system he created could be utilized to optimize crowd control and safety protocols and also be used in a commercial sense to maximize profits for retail stores.

Erika Tally and Marion Byrne’s first-place project examined the effects of three types of common pollutants to local water sources in the health of daphnia, a microscopic organism with transparent skin that enabled them to track an increased heart rate to determine negative affects from the pollutants introduced. They found that common pollutants from stormwater runoff led to dramatically higher heart rates in the daphnia than acid rain, emphasizing the importance of treating stormwater runoff.

Juniors Taylor Mason and Emma Torres also scored a first-place prize for their investigation into three local bodies of water — Annawamscutt, the Kickemuit River, and the Warren Town Beach. Through the introduction of oil-eating microorganisms into the samples, they were able to measure whether or not the waters had a presence of oil by the change in color to the water, a result of the metabolic reaction of the microorganisms consuming the oil. Oil presence was found only in the Kickemuit River sample, and they opined about the possibility of using those microorganisms to help clean contaminated waters.

Juniors Chase Jackson and Brady Connor won second-place for their project that sought to identify the most effective type of mask at preventing the spread of Covid-19, both outwardly to other people, and inwardly from other people. Their most intriguing results showed that disposable surgical masks actually slightly outperformed N95 masks at preventing the spread to other people, while N95 provided the most protection from outward contaminants. Most shocking, they showed that commercial fabric masks were essentially useless, allowing enormous amounts of bacteria through, both inwardly and outwardly.

Junior Abigail Lanctot won first place for her efforts to create an organic, child-safe hand sanitizer. She was able to show that ethanol-based hand sanitizers, while effective at killing surface bacteria, were not effective at killing E. coli cells, and that products marketed as “child safe”, because they don’t use ethanol, were not effective at killing more harmful bacteria either. Her organic, actic-acid-based hand sanitizer proved effective at killing both surface bacteria and the more hardy E. Coli bacteria, while not requiring the use of potentially-harmful ethanol.

Lucy O’Brien and Elena Oliveira, both freshmen, were awarded second place for their projects. O’Brien tested the efficacy of natural water filters that could be used for residential purposes in gardens to prevent harmful stormwater runoff. Oliveira tested the process of spherification on various types of beverages. Emma Coelho, also a freshman, got a third place nod for testing which commercial moisturizer did the best at retaining moisture within a Petri dish of Jell-O.