Central Elementary Student Takes First at County Science Fair

Central Elementary School fourth grader Molly McQueeney was named the First Place winner in Chemistry in the Elementary School portion of the Anne Arundel County Public Schools Science Fair.

Molly got a ribbon, a medal, a microscope and some goggles.

For her project, Molly wanted to know which beverage would dissolve flavor tablets the fastest.

Molly said that she likes to add the flavoring tablets to water, and wanted to see if there was some beverage that would make them dissolve faster. At first, she thought that cola would be fastest because of the bubbles.

But after her first round of testing, Molly learned that Cola wasn’t the fastest. Water was faster. Her hypothesis was completely wrong.

She did learn that water is known in science as the Universal Solvent.

Molly’s project was one that had won her local competition at Central Elementary and was sent up to the county level to be judged against projects from all county elementary schools. The night before the awards ceremony, Molly had to defend her project and answer questions from the judges. Then, the students got to look around at the works of their peers.

“I feel good about winning. But, I am surprised,” Molly said. “There were some really good [projects], like the one about vegan cupcakes and using tofu or apple sauce,” she said.