Hamilton-area students look to solve pot holes, plant polination problems and more at BASEF
It might just be the answer to getting Hamilton off the list of the CAA's worst roads in Ontario.
An autonomous robot that finds potholes, measures them, maps and fixes them.
That was the entry of Bishop Ryan student Anthony Saturnino in the 63rd annual Bay Area Science & Engineering Fair. It was one of 222 entries from 283 students in Grades 7 to 12 from Hamilton, Halton Region, Haldimand County, Norfolk County, County of Brant and Six Nations.
On Tuesday night, $175,000 in scholarships and cash awards and trip awards will be handed out at prize night. Winners could go on to the national science fair in Edmonton or the international event, both in May.
Saturnino worked on the project for three months after last year's science fair. Around the time he got his driver's licence and potholes became real for him.
His cure rolls across roads. A camera on the front finds a hole and records it at the same time a GPS chip sends its location online. The middle of the robot measures the volume and there is an apparatus at the rear to fill with granular material and glue.
Hillfield Strathallan's Kadhir Ponnambalam explored whether tardigrades - an aquatic micro-organism - could be used in the drug discovery field to avoid using mice, monkeys and pigs for testing.
I was able to use a power supply to generate an electric field over at the tardigrade end and then the tardigrade was able to exhibit a neuromuscular response which means that we can use the organism in drug discovery by testing this response before an after a drug has been administered to the tardigrade, and then comparing those results."
Jordan LeBlanc, a Grade 7 student at St. Matthew Catholic Elementary School, said his research showed the bee population decreased by 45.5 per cent over the winter from 2021 to 2022 due to mites and climate change.
They're dying very rapidly so I came up with this project to have a solution."
He created an artificial bee to aid with plant pollination. His bee hangs from a drone, and has a plastic stick and rabbit fur. An electrical charge causes static in the fur to pick up pollen when lowered on a plant. Moved to the next plant the charge is turned off and pollen released.
The past three years the event has been held on line due to COVID. For up to 80 per cent of the competitors it is their first in person event due to the pandemic. The last in-person BASEF was 2019.
John Rennison is a Hamilton-based photojournalist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: jrennison@thespec.com