By Blake Deshazo

The Selma Times-Journal

Morgan Academy students put their knowledge on display Wednesday at the school’s annual science fair.

Nearly 20 students competed, which featured projects that experimented with video games, music and toothpaste among many other topics.

“It’s very interesting, especially the topics they choose,” said Judy Bonds, a science teacher at Morgan Academy. “We had a big variety of different topics.”

To participate in the fair, students had to use the scientific method to perform an experiment and record the results.

“They have to follow the scientific method and make sure they follow the proper procedure,” Bonds said.

Trevor Wilson, a sixth grader, won first place in the Elementary Division.

“It made me feel really happy [to win] because this is the first time I’ve ever won,” Wilson said. “Last year I competed, but I didn’t win.”

His experiment, which was inspired by the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, combined video games and a bucket of ice.

“You were supposed to keep your foot in an ice bucket [while playing a video game] and see how long you could keep your [foot] in,” Wilson said. “It concluded that whenever you kept your foot in the water when playing a video game you would keep it in longer.”

Richard Alan Waters took home first place for the junior high division.

“This project is about what type of music would make bacteria grow the fastest,” Waters said.

“I scrubbed the bottom of my dishwasher and rubbed it on a petri dish. I hooked up music to it and ran it for a week recording data every day. It ended up being that country music made [the bacteria] grow faster than any other genre.”

Anna Catherine King’s whitening toothpaste experiment won first place for the Sr. High Division. She wanted to find out which brand worked best.

“We boiled eggs, and then we put them in tea to stain them for 24 hours,” King said. “We applied whitening toothpaste to seven of them for two minutes a day and recorded the results for seven days.”

The three first place winners along with the second and third place winners of each division will represent Morgan Academy next week in the AISA District Science Fair, which will be held at Autauga Academy.

Here are the second and third place winners of each division:

Elementary: Second place, Andrew Thomas, and Third place, George Turner

Junior High: Second place, Myles Reeves, and Third place, Caroline Thomas

Senior High: Second place, Sam Brackin, and Third place, Cooper McKinney