[kapolavery]

Originally Posted by waialua359

I've been to an ISEF twice. From time to time, you will see students who do Robotics and use some aspect of what they do/design into their Science Fair project.
If your attending this year, good luck!
Lots of scholarships that they give out which rivals FIRST but with much less people to compete with. However, very bright students that your competing with also.

any students from waialua coming down? or they mostly focus on robotics..
but thanks! hope its as fun as FRC haha

Originally Posted by Cjmovie

I did it last year (or at least, a pre-requisite of it). They held the Region II science fair at USC, which had the winners shipped off to ISEF (Top boy and girl projects overall).

It was actually kind of funny - I did a project in the botany section (lettuce and hydroponics/organoponics) and ended up winning 1st place in the Computer Science division because I wrote a program to do image analysis on pictures of my lettuce for leaf area (which was my dependent variable). I've got a really cool certificate from Intel for it, but didn't get anywhere near high enough ranking to make it to the big league

Any more detail on your project? What kinds of composite, what kind of testing?

Oh, and let us know how you do!

haha i think i said ISEF, but what i really meant was for ISEF state fair (hawaii state projects) but im hoping i'll qualify for international, which depends on the top winning projeect of a category.

but thats cool! botany is one of the biggest categories on hawaii.. but the computer science is real impressive too! projects w/ students that wrote a program often win imo

but my composite is a biocomposite (green material)
it combines the mechanical properties of unidirectional carbon fibers with biodegradable (PHB) thermoplastic polymers as a resin/epoxy for the carbon fibers

the application is that, since carbon fiber is expensive to produce and is basically a "one-time-use" with regular carbon fiber epoxy composites, you can melt off the thermoplastic and reuse/renew the carbon fibers into another application in terms of whether the fibers are short or long

the goal is to get it as strong as carbon fiber epoxy materials.. but that prolly wont happen bc of the difference in the amount of research with epoxy and PHB polymers.

hopefully though it turns out! so far, i won school level and 2nd place at districts/best in category (materials engineering)/asm award/nspe award/naval and airforce award

thanks for the best wishes!

Originally Posted by Steigerwald

I was hoping to go, but I wasn't able to this year.

My Project is on a LED Pumped Solid State Laser System. I won a 1st place award from the Army and a second place in engineering at the Synopsis fair here in San Jose.

oh i see.. well hopefully in later years youll be able to develop your project into something greater or usable at an FRC haha