PVNC Catholic students shine at annual Peterborough Regional Science Fair

Apr. 9, 2025

The Peterborough Regional Science Fair has been an annual tradition at Trent University since 1970.

It attracts hundreds of students of all grade levels from across Peterborough and the Kawarthas.

The projects require all aspects of learning including inquiry, experimental design and execution, literacy, math and art to create dynamic poster boards.

Claire Sehn, a Grade 8 student at St. Catherine Catholic Elementary School, did research on fire retardants in her project “Beat the Blaze”.

“I wanted to make a natural fire retardant to protect the environment against drought and wildfires,” Claire said. “I used a lot of different treatments, but the main one I used that was completely natural, was a combination of a hydrogel called Hydroxyethyl Cellulose or HEC and crushed mussel shells which are a natural fire retardant.”

Claire put all of her treatments on soil and wood and measured the moisture content of them over the course of three days.

“On the third day, I subjected the piles of wood to a test of combustion to see how well they would do against fire. I also added another test of combustion where I measured a single stick against treatments to see how well it would prevent fires,” she said.

Claire said her results showed the treatment using HEC and mussel shells was the best treatment compared to the others.

Grade 11 St. Peter Catholic Secondary School student Isabelle Young’s project called “Marsh to Motor” explored the use of invasive typha in biofuel production.

“My project is about producing ethanol from invasive cattail species,” Isabelle said. “I fermented and distilled a small ethanol product to prove that you could produce ethanol from what otherwise is waste or invasive species.”

Zena Muhandes, a Grade 10 student at St. Peter CSS, did her project on a condition that affects her mother called Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV), a disorder affecting the inner ear causing a spinning sensation in one’s head and loss of balance.

“I tested different physical treatments to heal BPPV and cure it. I tried the Dix Hallpike Maneuver, Epley Maneuver and half-somersault (Foster) maneuver. I found Epley was most effective,” Zena said. “I tried the treatments on my mother to determine the best treatment.”

St. Peter CSS students Brendan Xuereb and Noah Nowak had a cleverly titled project using a Seinfeld reference for their work on preventing scalds and burns from hot drinks or soup called “No Soup For You… At Least Not Yet.”

“We wanted to create an indicator tool to tell you if a drink is too hot to consume to avoid having to get those preventable mouth burns,” Brendan said. “We have a lot of different prototypes and models. It took a lot of developing. Essentially, the project hinges on a thermochromic powder which means at room temperature it’s a gel with black pigment and at a certain temperature it will react, turn to a liquid, the bonds will break and it’s transparent.” 

They used those findings to create a dipstick that when submerged into the solution will tell you if your drink or soup is at a comfortable temperature.

Claire, and her sister Ella, qualified for the Canada-Wide Science Fair in New Brunswick at the end of May.