By PETER DAY
Senior Reporter
At Lucerne Valley Elementary School, understanding the "scientific method" starts early.
Last Thursday evening, nearly all students participated in preparing projects for Family Science Night. All of the projects — there were more than 300 — addressed scientific basics: They posed a question, developed a hypothesis, included research, and hopefully, came to a conclusion with the help of concrete results.
"This year we had really good projects for kinder through 6th grade," said teacher Chris Pennington, who served as chair of the Family Science Night event.
According to the judges — a team of teachers, parents and stakeholders — the most effective project was created by Aubry Hirschhorn, an LVES fifth-grader who is going onto the San Bernardino Schools County Fair for the second year in a row. Aubry's project set out to prove the good or bad effects of ozone. Using homemade test strips she tested the air near the Lucerne Valley Market & Hardware Store, a local auto school, the LVES campus, Pasadena and her home in Big Bear Lake.
Her test results were inconclusive, but she has ideas for tweaking the project for the upcoming county science fair, which is in about three weeks.
Aubry's journal, which all students must maintain, also impressed Pennington.
"What I like about hers is it was all typed, but in the back it's all her original handwritten diary."
Eduardo Cervantes' second place overall project asked the question, "Can I cook an egg with cellphone radiation?" Using photos of an egg underneath a stand holding a cellphone, the project indicated that the heat generated by the device did raise the temperature by several degrees, but the egg remained uncooked yellow-and-white goo.
Other winners included Aubry's younger brother Gavin Hirschhorn, Wyatt Perry and Kylee Lambert.