Prairie River Junior High School students Brayley Emter, left, and Amara Drefs, stand with their awards at the Peace Regional Science Fair. They won the Best in Fair, gold in the Chemical, Earth and Physical Sciences category and the Excellence Award in the category for their project 3R – Value.

Richard Froese
South Peace News

Two students at Prairie River Junior High School in High Prairie have qualified for the Canada-Wide Science Fair next month.
Brayley Emter and Amara Drefs won the Best in Fair at the Peace Country Regional Science Fair held March 22-23 in Peace River for the project 3R – Value.
The project also captured gold in the Chemical, Earth and Physical Sciences category and Excellence Award in the category.
Shaun Strebchuk received a silver medal in Physics and Chemistry for his project Accuracy Between Calibers.
The girls are excited about their result and opportunity as they qualify for national science fair May 16-18 in Ottawa.
“Science fair is a great opportunity for students to expand on their ideas and tap into the raw creativity and curiosity that only children have,” Emter and Drefs say in an e-mail statement.
“We will prepare for nationals by recreating our project with more sensors to get the most accurate reading.”
Their project focuses on the three Rs to reuse, recycle and be responsible for the environment.
“We started this project because we have cats, and they live in a kitty condo with three types of insulation,” Emter and Drefs say.
“We wanted to see which insulation would have the highest R-Value and be the least detrimental to their health.
“As we continued researching, we realized that many places don’t have easy access to insulation, and it is a crucial structural element so we wanted to make it available for them.”
Prairie River Science teacher Neil Pereira says the students are full value for their results.
“The girls worked extremely hard the past few months, and even more since our school science fair,” he says.
“They knew what they wanted and they found a logical path to get themselves there.”
Judges were very impressed with the complexity of their project, he says.
“Some of the judges felt like it was hitting concepts at a high school level, if not a university level,” Pereira says.
“It was well laid out, well planned, and well executed.”
He says the girls will need to step up their project.
“Competition at the next level will be intense so they will need to become masters at their project,” Pereira says.
Organizers were impressed with all of Prairie River’s projects.
“They said our school keeps putting out amazing projects and to keep sending them,” Pereira says.
Pereira and the students thank the local sponsors to our local science fair for motivating our students to get to where they got to.
The Canada-wide Science Fair, the finale of the National Science Fair Network, features 500 of Canada’s top young science students to showcase their real-world solution to some of the globe’s most important issues while competing for nearly $1 million in awards, prizes, and scholarships, states information on the event website.