FALLS VILLAGE — Jim Bartram had a large soda bottle, a tube and two judges — Caroline Burchfield and Tom Schindler — observing at the Science Fair Tuesday, May 19, at the Mahoney-Hewat Science and Technology Center at Housatonic Valley Regional High School.
It looked like something was about to blow.
A reporter, arriving in mid-explanation and mindful of his sports jacket, decided to focus on Emily Sullivan’s project instead. (A reluctant decision, because few things are more photogenic than a soda pop explosion.)
Sullivan’s project, “How dyslexia affects students,” is personal, she said, because both Emily and her sister have dyslexia.
She wanted to see how dyslexia affects the ability of students to process, organize, understand and memorize information in a given amount of time.
A group of five dyslexic students and a group of five non-dyslexic students were given identical tasks, in math and reading.
She found the dyslexic students took twice as long as the non-dyslexic students to complete a set of 11 algebra problems, and had a lower average score.
Similarly, the dyslexic students took 30 seconds longer, on average, to read a paragraph aloud, and they made five times as many mistakes.
Sullivan was quick to point out that dyslexia has nothing to do with intelligence.
A judge asked her what she concluded from her experiment.
Sullivan said that “teachers don’t often recognize dyslexic students,” and might misinterpret the time difference.
Sullivan had trouble finding dyslexic students herself — students do not have access to other students’ records, so she had to rely on self-reporting.
Asked how she could improve her experiment, Sullivan said she would like to use bigger samples.
There were 62 projects in all at the Science Fair.
Mari Cullerton took first place in biology, with “Macroinvertebrates indicating water quality;” Katherine McGuire was second with “Effects of fertilizer on algae growth;” Katherine Starr’s “Bacteria on money” took third.
In the ninth-grade science category, Bradford Rawlings was first with “The effect of grain size on water absorption in wood;” Caleb Thompson’s “The effect of refraction on the speed of light” was second; and Paul Bannister’s “The effect of humidity on types of wood” was third.
Taylor Dowd’s “The effect of bat composition on distance a ball travels” won in the physics category.
Sharon, CTBill Wakeley 
Mill Pond, Sheffield MADeb Segalla-Watson
New Marlborough, MAWendy Miller 
Peter Austin
Falls Village, CTPete Sanders 
Tom Carley 
Factory Pond, Lakeville CTBarbara Peck
Lime Rock Road, Lakeville CTKeary Hanan
Lime Rock Road, Lakeville CTJake Marcum
Housatonic River, Sharon, CTBill Wakeley
Norfolk, CTTom Carley 
Reed Brook, Deans Ravine, Canaan CTBill Wakeley
