For the second year in a row, I was a judge at the LA County Science Fair, held here in Pasadena. Although my first choice judging category was Physics, I ended up judging my second choice of Earth and Space Sciences, Junior and Senior divisions. I was joined by 6 other judges, one of whom had judged last year and two others of whom were school teachers. We had 25 junior division projects and 4 senior division projects to judge.
Although in the past (when I judged physics, junior division) we had split up into pairs of judges, and none of us viewed every project, this year we split up into two groups, of 3 and 4 (iI was in the latter), and we determined to view every project in our division. It was a lot of work, and after a 7 AM breakfast, get-together, and orientation, judging started shortly after 9 AM and lasted until 3 PM, with an hour for lunch.
The projects ranged from generally okay to a few truly outstanding projects. The best in the senior division ranked, in my opinion, as good as a good summer undergraduate research project — complete with data from a real observatory (on Mt. Haleakala).
In the end, our scores for individual projects generally agreed, not necessarily numerically but good vs. bad. (Each judge has his or her own judging scale.) Also, we came to a pretty good consensus on the top three plus honorable mentions. Our first and second places in the senior division were unanimous and were so obvious that we finished with them by lunch. For the junior division, my first choice got first place, and my second and third choices got third and top honorable mention, which I was pretty happy with. The winner of second was my third place choice. Given the total number of projects, though, I was happy with the outcome.
All in all, it was a lot of work, but we had a very friendly group of judges, and we had a good time.
(One girl was so shy — “She puts the word ‘painful’ in painfully shy,” said a fellow judge — that three of us simply couldn’t hear her talk, and she sort of talked only to the only woman judge in our group of 4. I wanted so much to give her the benefit of the doubt, but it wouldn’t have been proper to give her anything other than a middling score, only on the basis of what I could glean from her poster.)
Today, I brought W to the public showing of the projects, and we also visited the interactive exhibits (a lot of “maker faire” kind of stuff).
W is on “tech crew” (i.e. stage crew) again for his school’s spring musical. He’s handling the spotlight at all three performances this weekend.
This year, they’re performing Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, complete with all the popular songs. Standouts among the middle school students include Belle, Mrs. Potts, and Lumiere. It’s a real crowd-pleaser, even if a lot of the kids don't (IMO) have a lot of vocal skill.