Caroline Chisholm Catholic College students Jules Nisperos and Cecilia Rafanan have excelled in recent science competitions. 74656 Picture: EMILY LANE
By ALESHA CAPONE
TWO students from a Braybrook school have achieved splendid results in science competitions.
Caroline Chisholm Catholic College pupil Cecilia Rafanan entered an essay on Hyperion, Saturn’s fourth moon, in the Cassini Scientist for a Day Essay Contest.
She won the Year 7 and 8 category of the competition, which teaches students about NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Cassini spacecraft mission to Saturn.
Cecilia entered the competition after attending a school excursion to the Victorian Space Science Education centre in Strathmore.
Her prize in the competition was a certificate, a chance to send questions to the Cassini Science team and an opportunity for Australian astrophysicist, Dr Angel Lopez-Sanchez from Macquarie University, to talk to her class. But Cecilia was not the school’s only science success story.
Her fellow student, Year 8 Jules Nisperos, recently entered the Annual Science Talent Search, a statewide competition organised by the Science Teachers Association of Victoria.
The annual event is open to all primary and secondary students.
Jules earned a Minor Bursary in the Experimental Research category for his project ‘Is it safe for my teeth?’
His investigation focused on the effects of different types of cola on pieces of animal bone.
Jules attended the contest’s presentation day at La Trobe University last month, where he was the only western suburbs student to win a bursary in the junior division of Experimental Research.
