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The items below include major
research projects done by Southside students for the science fair and IB
extended essays. Scroll down to find the essay titles. |
| Science
Fair Projects |
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Asteroid to be Named After
Southside Student
Southside student Nhan Nguyen will have an asteroid named in his honor
thanks to a 4th place win in the Intel International Science
and Engineering Fair.
Aaron Cheung also attended. Both students
met a numerous Nobel Prize winners, astronauts, etc. including:
Harrison H. Schmitt (last man to set foot on the moon), Dr. Leon Leaderman
(Nobel Physics winner and author of the God Particle) and Dr. Lawrence G.
Roberts (one of the inventors of the Internet).
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Southside was
the dominate force in the 2003 Greenville County Regional Science Fair.
Southside students won 15 special awards and 4 out of 6 place awards in
the regional fair as well as 2 special awards and a 4th place in the
International Fair. Winnings totaled about $2000 in cash and $40,000 in
scholarships not to mention 2 all-expenses-paid trips to the International
fair. |
- 1) Richard Banks
- Crystallization: The
project consisted of a program that creates an ice crystal from a
seed point and attaches one moving particle at a time. The purpose was to
allow others to understand the formation of crystals, and to gain the
ability to predict crystalline growth. This would allow someone to create
a crystal faster, stronger, and with better precision.
- Category: computer
science
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- 2)
Zach
Blaettler - Deflection of a
composite beam as modeled by a computer simulation: The program was
designed to calculate the deflection of a composite beam composed of wood
coated with aluminum. The program used variable load equations for both
cantilever and simply supported beams. The deflection values were
calculated and then stored in a linked list, which could be output to a
text file for graphing. The information was then tested against actual
deflection statistics taken from three composite beams.
- Category: computer science
- Awards: 2 special awards
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- 3) Shalini Bumb
- Category: Biology
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- 4) Aaron Cheung
- Can a Computer
Learn by Accumulating Past Experience: This project’s purpose was to
create a artificial intelligence learning algorithm that demonstrated a
computer’s learning capabilities. The model of tic-tac-toe was chosen
and the computer demonstrated amazing learning capabilities. In effect,
the computer program learned the rules and strategies of tic tac toe with
no guidance.
- Category: computer science
- Awards: 4th place
overall, 3 special awards. Attended the Intel
International Science fair as an observer.
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- 5) Chas Finch
- Prime Number
Management Utility: The military uses large prime numbers for
encoding/decoding. The problem comes in that in order to crack the code,
factors of 30 to 40 digit numbers must be determined, and regular
computers cannot handle numbers that large. The program stores the numbers
as strings of characters, enabling one to deal with these large numbers to
determine primality and factors of a large number. It also incorporates a
prime number database to increase efficiency.
- Category: computer science
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- 6)
Patrick
McCormick - Could Picket's
Charge Have Succeeded and Under What Conditions? The project simulated
the Civil War battle Pickett’s Charge, in which 14,000 Confederate
troops tried to rush 6,000 Union troops stationed behind embankments and
Union artillery over an open field. The simulation accounted for soldier
firing, accuracy, health, and movement. The program found that Pickett
would have needed at least 10,000 extra troops or that the Union army
would have had to be about half its actual size.
- Category: computer science
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- 7) Paul McKenney
- Music Classification Using
Hidden Markov Models: The project was about a
music classification algorithm (an algorithm that separates music
according to its styles) using hidden Markov models. The models,
which are a type of statistical artificial intelligence, were trained to
recognize several unique styles. The models were then used to
classify sample music files whose styles were already known, and the
accuracy of the classification algorithm reached 60%.
- Category: computer science
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- 8) Nhan Nguyen
- Training Neural
Networks with Genetic Algorithms: The project looked at different
methods of training artificial neural networks. It compared the
performance of learning under the traditional backpropagation algorithm to
a less traditional use the genetic algorithm to train neural networks.
Training under the genetic algorithm, the neural network was slightly more
accurate. However, the training process took much longer than the
backpropagation training.
- Category: computer science
- Awards: 2nd
place overall, 3 special awards. Attended the
Intel International Science fair. Won 4th place in computer science and
will, subsequently, have an asteroid named in his honor. Received a $500
award from the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and a
$40,000 scholarship offer to attend Florida Institute of Technology.
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- 9)
Zach
Reynolds -
Self-Similarity in Solutions to the Traveling Salesman Problem
- This project examined solutions to the
traveling salesman problem, a problem which finds the shortest round
trip route which visits each city on a given map of cities. The
fractional dimension of the solutions was measured in order to
determine if these solutions were fractal in nature. No evidence of
self-similarity was found, however.
- Category: computer science
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10) Tarak
Upadhyaya -
Secondary Protein Structure
Prediction Using Artificial Intelligence
This project used a feed-forward artificial neural network to predict
the three-dimensional secondary structure of proteins. The neural
network was trained using protein sequences with known three-dimensional
structures, and made use of the back-propagation error calculation
algorithm and the gradient descent parameter optimization algorithm. The
neural network used a sliding window of 7 amino acids to read in an
entire protein sequence and was able to predict it's three-dimensional
structure (which consists of alpha-helices, beta-sheets and coils/turns)
with an accuracy of 65-70%.
- Category: computer science
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Awards: Honorable
mention overall, 5 special awards
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- 11) Jeremy
VanderKnyff - Approximating
Multi-Body Orbits Using Kinematic Newtonian Analysis and Investigating the
Effects of Velocities Above and Below Critical Velocity on an Orbiting
Body: Using Newton’s basic laws
of motion, the program accurately models the way planets in a solar system
interact with each other. Using actual values for the masses and distances
of the nine planets and the Sun in our Solar System, the program
calculates the correct orbital patterns and periods for the planets down
to the hour. This is one of the closest approximations of orbiting bodies
performed using Newtonian analysis.
- Category: physics
- Awards: 3rd place overall, 2 special
awards. Won the opportunity to attended the Intel
International Science fair as an observer but was unable to go.
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- 12) David Wells
- Did Hunting Conditions and
Lack of Food Cause the Extinction of the Saber Toothed Cat? Using
random number generators, which simulated the necessary probabilities of
such things as a successful hunt. In increments of 500 years, the program
simulated the life cycles of three species – Saber Toothed Cat, Bison,
and Wooly Mammoth – as their existences interacted during the ten
thousand years before and after the end of the Last Ice Age. The program
recorded the final population count of the Cat after each specified
increment, collecting multiple data points for each increment. This data
was then used to create box plots for use on a population v. time graph.
Probabilities were also altered to test their importance.
- Category: computer
science
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- 13)
Kirsten
Coleman, Brittaney Golden - Can a Parabolic
Dish to Reflect sound waves, as it Reflects Light: Just as light hits
a parabolic surface, creating an area of maximum intensity at its focus,
sound should create a similar area of maximum amplitude. By setting
up a microphone, placed at the dish's focus, connected to an amplifier and
oscilloscope, the experimenters were able to locate such an area.
Experimental data shows that an area of maximum amplitude is between
approximately 30 degrees to the left and right of the dish's general
focus.
- Category: group
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IB Class
of 2003 Extended Essay Titles
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| The essays below
are approximately 4000 words long and were prepared for the IB Theory of
Knowledge class. Links marked pdf require an Adobe® Acrobat® Reader® to view.
If you do not already have one installed on your computer, you can download one for
free from by clicking here.
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- Elizabeth Canas
- The Disparities Between Mexican Americans in the United
States
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- Rosina Fankhauser
- Eleanor of Aquitaine
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- Justin Finch
- Can Music be Completely Understood as an Exclusive
Mathematical Subject?
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- Megan Glessman
- American Military in Okinawa
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- Nicole Haghshenas
- Given the Drastic Cost to Human Life, Are Economic Sanctions
an Effective Means of International Policy?
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- Alex Humphreys
- What is a True Artificial Intelligence and What Current Theory
Will Best Support Existence of Such a System in the Future?
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- Subhodaya Karki
- Stem Cell Research
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- Katie Kimbrell
- Different Painting Techniques in Mark Rothko and Jackson
Pollock’s Work Yield
- Similar Expressionistic Theories
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- Laura Licuanan
- Portrayal of the Hitler Youth in German and American Film
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- Andrew Mansbach
- Psychometrics in Advertising
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- Patrick McCormick
- Why Did the French Revolution Not End in September 1791?
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- Cassie McHone
- How are Dreams an Important Function in Human Life?
- Kamaya Mention
Dissociative
Identity Disorder
Kim Ho
Medieval Leprosy
Joy Ogunsile
Breast Cancer
- Angela Perry
- What is Autism, and is Music Therapy the Most Effective
Treatment?
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- Ryan Peters
- Was Abraham Lincoln the Modern War President?
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- Tim Rankin
- What Infinite Numbers Exist and How Do They Differ From Finite
Numbers?
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- Owen Reeves
- How Was Reconstruction After the Civil War a Failure in
Integrating Blacks into Society?
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- Zachary Reynolds
- World War II Cryptography
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- Chris Snapp
- The
Existence of God, Proven Using the Methods of C.S.
Lewis
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- Kemi Sobowale
- Stem Cell Research: What Does the Future Hold for This
Breakthrough in
- Regenerative Science?
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- Charles Stoop
- In What Cases is the Ketogenic Diet and Appropriate Treatment
for Children With Epileptic Seizures and What are the Side Effects
of That Treatment?
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- Jeremy Vanderknyff
- Can the U.S. Government Effectively Shield Children from Harmful
Material
- on the Internet?
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- Aaron Wells
- Many Voices, One Message?: An Examination in Order to Determine
if All Religions
- are Truly the Same
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- Shequetta Young
- How Does the Psychoanalytic Form of Therapy Attempt to Treat
Borderline Personality Disorder With Respect to Other Forms of
Therapy, and Which Method Proves to be the Most Effective?
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- Cindy Youssef
- What is Zazen Meditation, How is it Practiced, and Why is it
Appealing to the Western World?
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