Submitted information:
We are the Structural Nucleic Acid Anticancer Research Society (STARS), and we are a group of Cobb County high school students who enjoy performing research for crystallography. In fact, in the summer of 2019, our founder and president, Susanna Huang, presented a 20-minute presentation at the American Crystallographic Association about her research in selenium-modified DNA crystals. Also, in the spring semester of 2020, our team placed 2nd at the national US Crystal Growing Competition for the crystal quality category.
Recently, we were inspired to host our own 2021 Cobb County Crystal Growing Competition. The crystal growing season has started already and will end on April 11th. Due to the pandemic, many extracurricular activities have been cancelled. Unfortunately, because of this and because of social distancing measures, many students are often deprived of scientific and hands-on activities at home or in school.
Through this virtual competition, we hope to provide students K-12 a fun STEM experience and an exciting contest to compete in while staying protected in their homes. Since salt is a safe, relatively common, and easily accessible household product, we settled on centering the competition on growing crystals of salt.
Through this competition, we hope to help students better understand the scientific theories of crystallography. Though they are only growing inorganic salt crystals, the general methodology of experimentation and research is very similar to that of growing organic crystals (which is important for x-ray crystallography and curing diseases like cancer). Please find the playlist of introduction videos that we prepared for competitors that discusses and explains basic crystallization topics (e.g. What is a single crystal, saturated vs unsaturated solution, how to maintain a crystal solution, etc.): https://youtube.com/playlist?list= PLUhmxDvClcLkFkqB10LrKn4OdcFNn 2QXl Through our competition, we hope to spur the creativity and scientific thinking of students.
Related stories
- Cobb schools make calendar changes for staff vaccines
- 106 new Cobb schools COVID cases is lowest since November
- Cobb school bus driver appreciation event to donate PPE supplies
- Cobb schools cancel contract for disinfecting UV lights
- East Cobb teachers named NASA Astronomy Ambassadors
- Cobb schools detail teachers, staff about COVID vaccines
- Cobb schools Code Red alert investigated as cyber attack
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
