Marie Claire Inniss, an eighth-grader at Shaker Heights Middle School, received a third place medal for her chemistry project at the Northeastern Ohio Science and Engineering Fair held at Cleveland State University. She also was awarded the NEOSEF Board of Directors Award for an Outstanding Project. Eighty schools participated in the event, totaling 538 students.
Marie Claire’s project involved an analysis of the water content in popcorn as it affects its ability to pop. Her work involved weeks of experiments, calculating and graphing the data, and keeping a journal of her observations and conclusions.
In the abstract for her project, she explains, "A few years ago, I wondered why all the kernels in my popcorn did not pop. I decided to do an experiment to find a way to pop all the kernels. I found that popcorn with the smallest amount of water contained in them popped the best. This year, I decided to focus on error analysis of the project and how to lower the error.”
As part of her project, Marie Claire built a desiccator using household items, scrap metal, and sodium and calcium chloride to draw moisture out of the popcorn kernels. She compared those results to the method of using a standard oven. She also experimented with changing the number of kernels she popped at a time, and with using an air popper versus a microwave.