Ecybermission Interview
By Sheryl Lin
Hi folks! Today we’ve got an interview with the New York State winners of our Ecybermission competition, the team Algae Allies. Ecybermission is a national contest in which students decide on one community issue and try to come up with a solution, and it’s something you’ll take part in during 8th grade Science Enrichment.
Basically, you spend a period of time during the summer brainstorming about what projects you could do. Then you can either choose to do one of two things: build a device or model that could solve your problem, or perform an experiment based on a scientific inquiry. You then spend the rest of the year following a procedure, carrying out tests and creating a solution using the scientific method. Winners receive scholarship money as reward!
Q: What was Ecybermission like? How was it?
Harry: It was a fun adventure and time to elaborate with my classmates to help the community.
Anthony: It was tough but it was worth it.
John: It was hard work but it paid off in the end.
Q: What was your community problem and solution?
We wanted to fix the issue of the overuse of fossil fuels in the environment to prevent the consequences of global warming. We noticed that biofuel was becoming increasingly popular and we saw algae as a good source of the necessary oil. Our solution was finding the best way to grow algae for use in the fuel industry.
Q: What kinds of challenges did you guys face?
Anthony: Staying up late, spending lots of time to make ourselves sound scientific.
Ryan: like very late
Q: Your team chose to do a scientific inquiry. Could you explain what that is?
Ryan: A scientific inquiry is where instead of inventing something, we run tests on something that already exists.
Q: What steps did you have to take during the process? What kinds of things did you do?
Anthony: We met with a botanist to get information on how to culture algae. We also spent time after school to gather supplies and set up our algae as well as meeting at Ryan’s house to count algae and collect data.
Harry: We had to collect supplies, do conferences and interviews.
Q: What do you feel was the most important thing that made you win?
Harry: TEAMWORK!
Ryan: It was definitely the group effort and constant perseverance that helped us win.
John: When we worked at late into the night we reminded ourselves of the cash reward we could win in the end and that our work could help benefit the planet.
Q: Do you have any advice for future teams?
Anthony: just do all of your work and if you work hard enough you might be rewarded
Ryan: WORK HARD FOR DA MONEY!!!!!!!!!
Harry: Use your time very wisely.
John: If you want to win something, go out and do it.
