Metuchen honors Edgar Middle School science fair winners at April 8 board meeting

The Metuchen Board of Education on April 8 recognized first-place winners from the Edgar Middle School Science Fair during its regular meeting, celebrating student projects on biodegradable plastics, plant growth, water quality and physics.

School officials introduced the winners and presented certificates to fifth-grade winners Lincoln Holmes and Sonam Vias, sixth-grader Charles Weiss, seventh-graders Vedushi Singh and Lillian Keith, and eighth-graders Emma Gilliland Duarte and Ayushi Kamath.

The recognition highlighted about 100 student projects judged by 25 community volunteers and supported by the district’s Science National Honor Society students. School staff thanked teachers and community partners who organized and judged the fair.

Lincoln Holmes and Sonam Vias described their first-place fifth-grade project, which tested three types of homemade and alternative plastics—casein (milk-based) plastic, PLA, and conventional plastic—for water permeability, durability and brittleness. “We saw that casein plastic was the best because it has the best water permeability out of all them besides the regular plastic, and it had also very good durability,” Lincoln said.

Charles Weiss, the sixth-grade winner, said he tested chia-seed growth in water, salt water and sugar water, reporting that the salt condition caused crystallization and the sugar condition developed mold. “In the second time, we used a different setup and it worked well,” Weiss said.

Seventh-grade winners Vedushi Singh and Lillian Keith presented a water-quality project that compared samples from school fountains using a 16-element test strip. Singh said one test returned an inconclusive reading for lead in a bathroom fountain and that the team reported the finding to school staff. “Then we later found out in one of the bathrooms, there is lead in the water,” Singh said.

Eighth-grade winners Emma Gilliland Duarte and Ayushi Kamath presented a project titled Defying Gravity, which combined physics experiments with applications to dance balance and bun styling. They described tests on posture and weight distribution relevant to dance performance.

School staff at the meeting thanked teachers and volunteers for organizing the fair. Supervisor of secondary STEM Kate Limerick and supervisors for elementary and other grades were introduced by staff and helped present the awards.

District officials noted the science fair is part of a broader set of spring events, and attendees were invited to take souvenir agendas and to attend other upcoming school science fairs and community fundraising events.

The board’s recognition came near the start of the meeting and was followed by routine agenda business including roll-call votes on minutes and consent items later in the session.

For the record, the event and board meeting were held under the Metuchen Public School District’s public-notice practices and compliance with the New Jersey Open Public Meetings Act.