10th-graders publish science work

When Brent Osborn, a science teacher at North Central High School, wants to get the attention of his 10th-grade class, he calls the students “awesome and amazing scientists.”

Now that their work has been published in their own Journal of Science, they truly can be called scientists.

For the third year in a row, the students visited the Pinecroft Natural Area Preserve to study the plant life and animals that thrive there. They wrote about their findings and now have the North Central High School Journal of Science to show for it.

The students come up with questions and strive to answer them through their studies.

Students wrote about topics such as “Impact of fire on soil fertility at the Pinecroft Natural Area Preserve” and “Yellow-bellied marmot and Columbian ground squirrel habitat and distribution in Pinecroft.”

“I didn’t know anything about DNA before I started,” said Joy Clark, a 16-year-old sophomore who says she would like to be an engineer someday.

She said she learned how to extract DNA and learned about genetic diversity.

“I like getting results,” she said.

Rachel Ballard, 15, discovered that the environment affects lichen that grow pretty much anywhere.

Osborn said the students compared lichen at Pinecroft and lichen at Riverside State Park.

The class took four official field trips to Pinecroft, and many students also made trips on their own.

They used equipment such as global-positioning devices and motion-activated cameras. They collected scat and soil samples.

Each paper in the 112-page journal includes an introduction, a description of methods and materials the students used, results of their study and a listing of the many works referenced in the paper. Charts, graphs, maps and pictures of the DNA analyses also are included.

Not only did the students publish their findings in their own journal, but they also presented them at the North Central Science Symposium recently.

Osborn estimates the project costs $10,000 to $12,000. Much of the money to conduct the research and print the journals came from a grant from Itron.

Around 500 journals were printed. Each student received two copies, Itron will get 25 to 30 copies, each student in next year’s class will get a copy and the school will keep some.

Osborn also likes to bring the journals along when he goes to science conferences during the summer.

“Lots of people ask for them,” he said.

The students received their journals during class on June 13.

“What you did this year,” Osborn told the class, “is absolutely incredible. You are part of an elite group of sophomore scientists.”

Ballard was proud of her work. Although she said she’s not sure if she will continue to study science after high school, she was glad to get her copy of the journal.

“It’s really great to see that all our hard work turned into something,” Ballard said.