By: Ankita A.
Year: 2016
School: Venado Middle School
Advisior: Bob Evans
Devision: Junior
Ankita, an 8th-grader at Venado Middle School, competed in the Junior Division of the OC Science and Engineering Fair of 2015 – 2016. She won third place with her chemistry project entitled, “Effect of Temperature on the Solubility of Table Sugar and Table Salt.”
Ankita decided to participate in the science fair because she has always loved science. She loves to explore new things and gain first-hand experience in investigating scientific topics.
Ankita was inspired to do her project one day when she was helping her mother make some tea. She observed that she was able to dissolve sugar in a cup of hot tea much more quickly than in a cup of cold tea. This observation interested her so much that she wanted to investigate this topic in more depth. This, in addition to recently learning about solubility in science class, gave Ankita her project idea to assess the effect of temperature on the solubility of commonly-used condiments.
For her project, Ankita investigated the effect of the water temperature on the solubility of the table sugar and salt that was dissolved in the water. Her hypothesis, later proven to be correct, was that the solubility of table sugar and salt will increase with increasing temperature.
Ankita faced many obstacles during her science fair journey, but the biggest obstacle she faced was that it took an extremely long amount of time to dissolve table sugar and salt in ice-cold water. In order to make her procedure more efficient, she adjusted her experimental design by designating a constant time of five minutes for dissolving each increment of sugar or salt.
“The science fair was an incredible opportunity to learn more about what I love,” Ankita says. “My love and compassion for science has brought me this far; I believe I will continue to learn and expand my knowledge of science for years to come.”