Marquette University will host the ninth annual Badger State Science and Engineering Fair Saturday, March 27, with approximately 100 students from across Wisconsin expected to present their research projects.

The junior scientists will be present to explain their displays to the public from 4:15 to 5:30 p.m. in the ballroom of Marquette’s Alumni Memorial Union, 1442 W. Wisconsin Ave. Entries include projects in the behavioral/ social science, biology, chemistry/biochemistry, engineering, environmental/ earth/space science, math/ computer science, medicine/ health, microbiology and physics categories.

“Every year the projects and research these students come up with amaze me,” Dr. Jon Jensen, associate dean of Marquette’s College of Engineering and a member of the fair’s planning committee, said. He cited a few titles from this year’s entrants:

• Influence of Protein Intake on Hypertension and Kidney Disease
• Finding the Most Accurate Means of Calculating the Speed of Sound
• The Effect of Different Stimuli on the Angle of Dogs Tail wagging
• The Effect of Landfill Chemicals on the Strength of Plastic
• The Efficiency of Windows 7 Voice Recognition

There are 30 different awards, including Best-of- Show, which provides the recipient and a mentor with travel and lodging expenses for the International Science & Engineering Fair, the Governor’s Young Scientist Award, and an award from the Marquette University College of Engineering for an exemplary engineering project, which provides a $10,000 renewable scholarship.

Chantel Newman won the engineering award last year with her project that combined a walker with crutches. “My mom had to have two hip replacements and for a time it was really hard for her to move. I decided to combine the two to make moving easier for people in similar situations,” she said. Newman, a graduate of St. Thomas More High School in Milwaukee, is now a freshman in Marquette’s College of Engineering studying biocomputing engineering.

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