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Are You In or Are You Out? What Does it Mean to be Cool?
1 Comment Last year, 14-year-old Shelby Marie Raye from Manatee High School in Bradenton, Florida was looking through a teen magazine and saw an article that said “How To Be Popular in High School.” She wondered what traits made someone appear to be popular or “cool.” Since she had a science class that required a science fair project, she decided to study that question like a scientist. So she surveyed hundreds of students in her school about what it means to be “cool.”
Her project, titled, What’s In and What’s Out: High Schoolers’ Perceptions of Coolness, determined that in her school, football was considered to be the “coolest” sport for boys while cheerleading and dance were the coolest sports for girls. Over 50% of the students said that grade point average was not related to being cool, and that as teens got older they thought it was less cool to be in honors classes. (What’s that about anyway?) She also learned that by the time boys turned 18, they thought it was less cool to drink, smoke, and take other dangerous risks than when they were younger.
Interestingly, more boys thought it was cool to have a girlfriend….than girls, who weren’t as convinced it was cool to have a boyfriend. And what traits make boys seem cool? Boys said the coolest traits were to be funny and confident. Yet females thought being friendly and outgoing were the coolest traits.
To see Shelby present her work to the Director of NIH and other scientists, check out the video above. You can also learn more about Shelby’s science project on NIDA’s Web site.
BTW, NIDA scientists were so impressed with Shelby’s project that they awarded her third place at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, and Shelby walked away with a prize of $1000— proof that being smart is pretty cool after all!
What the Heck is Third Hand Smoke?
That’s what a lot of people were asking at the 2009 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair
in Reno a few months ago. Two 16 year olds in San Antonio, Texas, worked together to try and find out. Keystone High’s Sehar Anjum Salman and Jada Nicole Dalley showed that third hand smoke—all the toxic chemicals left behind on furniture, car upholstery or clothing after the cigarette smoke floats away—produces as many mutations in newborn fruit flies as second hand smoke—when someone blows their cigarette smoke near you and you breathe it in.
Winners Jada Nicole Dalley and Sehar Anjum Salman with their poster and NIDA science fair judges.
Meth Dead Don’t Get Eaten
That’s what 17 year old Daniel Jeffrey Martin from Desert Vista High School heard from his mom one day while driving near a piece of the desert near his home town of Phoenix, Arizona. “Huh?” he asked. His mom, a forensic scientist (think: CSI), explained to him that when dead bodies are found in the desert by animals like coyotes, bobcats, and wolves, these scavengers will usually eat them—except for the bodies of methamphetamine users (proven by an autopsy).
Daniel thought this would be a perfect science fair project so he studied the records from the local county coroner’s office. And sure enough—he learned that even scavenging animals don’t want to go near the nasty chemicals left in the body by meth. YUK!
These photos from Daniel's science fair poster show the type of marks left by animal scavengers on bones. In his study, Daniel learned that the coroner found fewer scavenging marks on bodies that contained traces of methamphetamines.
The science project was so well done that Daniel won a Second Place Addiction Science Award from NIDA at the 2009 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair . You can read more about his project at NIDA’s website.
Winner Daniel Jeffrey Martin with NIDA science fair judges at the 2009 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
