The Emporia Gazette

May 28, 2012

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Three Turning Point Learning Center students brought home one gold and two silver medals from the Kansas State Science and Engineering Fair held April 3 at Friends University in Wichita.

Fifth grader Colin Cooper won a first-place medal with his project called "Desalinating Water for Human Use and Consumption."  He looked at ways to make salt water potable for drinkable and useful for agricultural use.

Cooper stayed up late nights and put in a lot of hard work between the Regional and State Fairs.  He feels his topic is important because, "if we run out of water, we have to find a way to make water drinkable or potable."

Fifth grader Jordan Reber won a second-place award with his project, "Can People Taste the Difference between a Low-Fat and High-Fat Snack."  He found that people can't always tell the difference between the two types of snacks.   About his experience at the fair, Jordan said, "You really needed to be a good speaker and be able to explain your entire project, not just stand there and read it off your board.  It was really hard."

Sixth-grader Kegan Magathan received a second-place medal for his project, "Experimenting with Wings ’n Wind Tunnels" where he studied the lift of different wing and airfoil designs in a wind tunnel. He also won the Excellence in Science and Engineering Award from the U.S. Air Force. 

"I was really surprised, because I had to go with my back up plan,” Kegan said. “I wish I'd have been able to go with my original plan, which was to build a wind tunnel from scratch."

Students qualified to compete in the state science fair after receiving awards at the local and regional levels. "