Almost 1,300 students entered their projects in the Greater Kansas City Science & Engineering Far. This is the 64th year the fair has been held, and one of the three grand award winners is from Olathe.
Andrea Dahl is a sophomore at Olathe North High School whose project was to study Antarctic penguins in order to determine if the calls made by penguins in different colonies were different, depending on the distance between the colonies. Dahl worked with a scientist at the South Pole who sent recordings of the birds’ calls to her. She then devised computer programs comparing and analyzing the calls.
She discovered when colonies were closer together, the birds’ calls were similar, but when the distance increased, the calls became dissimilar—in effect, the birds developed “dialects”. This could eventually make communication among the colonies more challenging, and since the penguins are central to the food chain in Antarctica, their inability to communicate could disrupt the entire ecosystem.
As a result of her work, Dahl—who says she is definitely going into science—will compete against students from around the world at the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair, to be held in May in Pittsburgh.
School officials could work with a banner printing company on a congratulatory banner to hang in the school entrance.
