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Sunday, February 19, 2006Science-fair projects have long ranged from the age-old styrofoam solar systems and papier-mâché volcanoes to more ambitious computer and engineering experiments. But Spencer Herman, a 17-year-old in Roslyn, N.Y., chose a somewhat more contentious topic: examining fetal tissue from terminated human pregnancies. "Nobody else is doing this kind of research," says Mr. Herman, who entered his work in this year's Intel Science Talent Search and talked up the highlights of his birth-defect study to his Ivy League interviewers. "They were like, 'Wow.' " ....Serene Chen says she might not be at Harvard now were it not for her application essay, which described her fetal-stem-cell research on the characteristics of Down syndrome. "If you say you studied something like 'random molecule,' it's obscure, but when you say 'stem cells,' people really perk up," says Ms. Chen, 20, now a sophomore. The most controversial science fair project in my high school was a kid (known to have a drug problem) who studied barbituates in rats. The runner up was the kid who grew marijuana in his basement. His project was an experiment to find the best conditions for plants to grow in artificial light. His wasn't controversial because only his fellow students knew about his extracurricular activities, but I'm sure he profited from his experiments. posted by Sydney on 2/19/2006 09:46:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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