2004 CPCUG Science Fair Awards

Once again CPCUG will recognize talented young computer scientists on June 14th at our General Meeting. Since 1996 the Capital PC User Group has honored deserving young computer scientists for their outstanding science fair projects. CPCUG President Dennis Courtney will present the awards including present plaques, $50 savings bonds, and one-year CPCUG memberships for special achievement in exploring computer technology. Before the meeting, the awardees will present project displays to CPCUG members. CPCUG's volunteer judges were impressed by the intelligence and enthusiasm of these young people. They have much to teach us about their explorations in Computer Science. We have also invited these young scientists to send us electronic copies of their papers for inclusion on the CPCUG Web Server and synopses in the Monitor.

 

Name

Title

School

Anne Arundel County Fair judged by John Holland
Dominic Plourde Egg Drop. What packaging material will best protect an egg when dropped from a height? Bubble wrap and packing peanuts protect objects better than other packaging materials. Arundel Middle School
Emily Gilbertson The Bell Curve Image ... Meade Middle School
Loudoun County Science and Engineering Fair judged by George Herbert
Avek Dayal A Robotic Simulation of the Possible Permutations for the Probability of Heads or Tails Tosses. This project is a robotic simulation of the tossing of a coin. Dayal programmed his robot to move forward if the coin landed on heads and move backwards when it landed on tails. He tabulated how many times it returned to the original position as the number of tosses increased. His results showed that as the number of tosses increased, the amount of times it returned to its original position decreased. Dayal won second place in the Loudoun Fair and participated in the Virginia State Fair in April. Broad Run High School
Nathan Glenn Fundamental Analysis of Multi-Agent Systems in Common Applications. This project was a study of ways of communicating between simulated agents/computer programs. Multi-agent systems looks to be a fast emerging idea on the internet and company networks. Image ... Broad Run High School
Montgomery Area Science and Engineering Fair judged by George Liao, Rusty Romaine, Nancy Landreville, and Peggy Lucero
Molly Carton 3D Cellular Automata Holton-Arms School
Michael Cohen Site Percolation On A Square Lattice. The study looked at the specific problem of site percolation on a square lattice (grid).  Imagine a disease to which some trees (sites) are resistant, with probability p that a tree is susceptible (occupied).  This disease has the characteristic that it will spread from a tree to all adjacent susceptible trees, and if a susceptible tree is exposed, it will get the disease.  If one tree is exposed to the disease, a whole group (cluster) may be infected.  A cluster is said to percolate when the cluster has infinite size.  The percolation threshold is the value of p such that all higher values of p will have some percolating clusters.The cluster size did increase extremely rapidly with the increase of p, as was my hypothesis.  With this system, the approximate percolation threshold was between 0.58 and 0.585.  More ... Takoma Park Middle School
Joshua Klontz and Brian Go Programming A Model Rocket Flight Simulator. A program was built to simulate the flight of a model rocket. ... The results of the tests confirmed that the simulator accurately modeled rocket flight for conventional rockets, however it had trouble accurately predicting more eccentric models. More ... Bethesda Chevy-Chase High School
Ceryen Tan Prevention of Resource Overload in Distributed Network Systems Through Self-Adaptive Algorithms Montgomery Blair High School
Akimitsu Hogge What's Your Grade? Is Text Compression A Valid Indicator of Grade Level? This project applies entropy, a concept in data compression theory, to determine the maturity level of a document. My results showed significant correlation between the predicted grade level of the writings and the real grade levels, suggesting that entropy measurement could be developed as one tool to analyze the maturity of a document. More ... Takoma Park Middle School
Arleen Thukral What Affects Computer Performance the Most: CPU, Memeory or Cache. This project seeks to determine and understand the effects of CPU speed, cache & memory on computer performance, which will make computer buyers more knowledgeable about the best purchases and upgrades for them. ... The increase in Cache increased the computer performance the most compared to the increase in CPU speed and increase in memory. More ... Montgomery Village Middle School
Christina Zou Randomness Creates Deterministic Fractals: A Study of the Chaos Game and Sierpinski Triangles This research uses the same concept of Sierpinski triangle address space and address sequences to develop some interesting IFS, which use a pre-defined set of “forbidden”strings obtained from results of the random number generators to simulate the same images produced from the generators. More ... Takoma Park Middle School
Lauren Cohen Novel Algorithms for surface plasmon resonance data processing in a parallel multitask environment. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) allows for the real-time study of the structure and function of biological molecules at surfaces. Novel computational methods were developed to improve the speed and accuracy of an SPR multi-channel imaging technique. The polynomial algorithm was found to be more accurate for changes of less than 100 Å, while the integral algorithm was more accurate for larger shifts. The integral method was also up to 250 times more precise and displayed an almost eightfold increase in speed over the polynomial method. More ... Montgomery Blair High School
Lyonel Dario The Effects of different amounts of satellites on the efficiency and accuracy of a global positioning system (GPS). If different amounts of satellites varying from five to ten are used, then the more amount of satellites used, the more accurate and efficient reading is calculated. More ... Takoma Park Middle School
Simon Kung Pressure Induced Phonon Frequency Shifts in Transition-Metal nitrides Winston Churchill High School

Six volunteer CPCUG judges worked hard to select these projects, covering three fairs this year. Our thanks go to the judges plus invaluable support from the CPCUG Board.

County Judge
Anne Arundel Science and Engineering Fair John Holland
Loudoun County Science and Engineering Fair George Herbert
Montgomery Area Science and Engineering Fair Nancy Landreville, Peggy Lucero, Charles Romaine and George Liao

It's challenging to understanding and assess the projects yet rewarding to see these young people doing such good work. This program is an excellent way to bring new and energetic members into CPCUG. Moreover, the awards provides CPCUG with positive visibility with the scientifically literate families of the Washington DC area. If you would like to see your jurisdiction included in next year’s effort, please contact Walt Houser CPCUG Coordinator at.

CPCUG Science Fair Home Page