Pacific Northwest Chapter

The first place AWG SAGE award went to Marlene Iredale, junior at Sequim High School, 

who swept the WSSEF with 11 awards, including the fair’s Grand Prize Gold medal. In addition to the WSSEF First Place Award,

Marlene’s work

"Evaluating Tsunami Risks in Discovery Bay, WA"

was recognized with WSSEF Special Awards: A Decade of Discovery, American Meteorological Society Certificate of Outstanding Achievement, BAE Systems Awards (Grades 9 - 12), NOAA's Taking the Pulse of the Planet Award, UQC Award for Excellence in the Physical Sciences and Engineering, and the Evergreen State College Natural and Physical Science Scholarship - Best of Show, the Ohio Wesleyan University Outstanding Achievement in Science Scholarships and the Whitman College Scholarship

The SAGE second place award went to

Kathryn VIRDEN a 7^th grader at CHRIST THE KING SCHOOL in Richland. She also received a Discovery Youth Science Challege award.  Her project was “Carbon Dioxide, Ocean Acidification, and Coral Reefs.”  Concerned that increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are acidifying the oceans and endangering coral reefs, Kathryn wondered how fast the reefs would dissolve. She made seawater by adding sea salt to water, then acidified her solutions to a range of pHs with vinegar (acetic acid).  She then added a pre-weighed amount of ground-up coral to each solution, let them sit for 4 days, then measured the end pH and filtered out the remaining coral.  She dried and weighed the coral to see which solutions dissolved the most coral.

The SAGE third place award went to Talia SHEINKOPF, a 4^th grader at BELLINGHAM H C L P for her project “How Is Soil Affected by Pollution?”  Talia sampled soil at several locations, including a proposed park near the Georgia Pacific pulp mill in Bellingham, the yard at her home, and several nearby parks.  She wondered whether the airborne mercury emitted over the years by the mill had resulted in elevated soil concentrations.  She made arrangements with a local lab to give her a special low rate on the part-per-billion level soil analyses, and they even let her come in and do some of the sample preparation.  Her hypothesis was supported by her sampling, but she was reassured by the fact that the highest level was still 3 orders of magnitude below levels that EPA considers harmful in soil.