For the first time in the 44-year history of the Thames Valley Science and Engineering Fair, two students shared the top prize at the event this past weekend. Both students are from London Central Secondary School.
The winners of the Best in Fair award are Grade 12 student Victor Ling, with his project “Unlocking the Geology of Mars,” and Grade 10 student Aleksa Bjelogrlic with his entry, “Autonomous Landmine Detection System.”
Ling says the Fair creates an opportunity for students to choose a project they’re passionate about and to have fun creating new science. His project may lead to answers about Mars as a potential planet for human inhabitation.
“We don’t have a good understanding of what is going on under the surface on Mars. Craters are natural windows to the underground, so my project looks at 1,000 craters using data from NASA satellites and high definition and thermal images to answer some key questions about Mars.”
Ling and his Western University mentor are writing a paper on the project for publication and it may one day become a patented idea.
Bjelogrlic’s project has direct implications for life on this planet. “My project uses a special type of radar that can see underground to detect landmines. There are 110 million landmines buried around the world and they kill 15,000 – 20,000 people each year. I’m trying to make the job of these de-miners easier and more efficient,” he says.
Applying electrical engineering, which is advanced science for a secondary school student as this subject is not taught until university, Bjelogrlic designed a device for use on a rover used to sweep a landmine field to identify the location and depth of each landmine.
“It would store all of this information on a memory card that could be retrieved by the de-miners once the rover returns to a safe place. It keeps humans away from the mines until they know exactly where they are,” Bjelogrlic says.
More than 120 local scientific, industry and educational leaders judged the science projects entered by 241 young scientists in Grades 4-12 from 21 schools across Thames Valley.
The winning projects, nine of which are going to the Canada Wide Science Fair this May, covered a variety of interesting topics that can change and improve lives. For a complete list of winners and more information on the TVSEF, go to: www.tvsef.ca.
