Maharishi School students participate in Science Fair

FAIRFIELD — Five Maharishi School students who participated in Science Fair this year came home with a first-place finish in their category at the state competition.

One of them, sophomore Ishita Mukadam, was crowned state champion and was invited to the International Science Fair in Atlanta because of her outstanding entry, which involved research into a type of medicinal bandage.

Asha Sharma, who teaches at the school and is the adviser for its Science Fair team, said she was thrilled with the performance of her students this year. She said it was the first time that any of them had to present their Science Fair projects to a judge in-person, since the contest had been held virtually the last two years, with presenters filming themselves and sending in the videos for judges to view.

Sharma said each student comes up with a Science Fair project idea on their own, and she puts them in touch with helpful resources, such as local specialists who can guide their research. For instance, Ishita’s project revolved around how to incorporate turmeric, a common spice in Asian cuisine, into medicine.

Ishita said she was intrigued when she learned her mother puts turmeric on cuts and wounds, because she had always thought of the spice as something that belonged in food, not as a healing agent. That prompted her to research the plant, and she learned that it has anti-bacterial properties, and has long been used in Eastern Medicine.

However, turmeric can stain clothes, and that’s why Ishita had stayed away from using it on her wounds and instead opted for band aides.

“But band aides don’t protect a wound from bacteria and don’t nourish cell growth. They just protect against re-injury,” Ishita said.

Ishita wanted to incorporate the healing power of turmeric into a bandage, something that could be placed on a wound without staining clothes. She consulted with the staff at Jefferson County Health Center, and looked for a binding agent that worked well with turmeric powder. She found that shea butter worked well, and when it’s pressed against the body, it allows turmeric to enter the wound. Armed with this knowledge, she created three prototypes of her “turmeric bandage.”

Ishita’s sister, Poojita, an eighth-grader, did her Science Fair project on creating a device to measure whether fruit is ripe, which is helpful for colorblind people who struggle to see when a fruit has ripened.

Poojita said this project grew out of her research into circuitry. She said it was fun to use her knowledge of transistors and resistors in a way that she hopes will help people.

By pure happenstance, when Poojita took her project to the State Science Fair, she drew a judge who was colorblind. The judge was impressed to meet a student who designed a device that could help them in the grocery store.

Saraswati Quevedo-Valls and Yeabtsega Taffesse, both juniors, teamed up to do a project measuring the mental health of their classmates in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yeabtsega said she and Saraswati have noticed a shift in their classmates’ behavior in the last few years, and they wanted to explore that change and propose solutions.

The two sent out a couple of surveys to measure their classmates’ level of stress and factors such as whether they feel neglected in their peer group.

Antariksha Sharma, an eighth-grader, did her project on measuring hearing loss from frequent headphone use. She said a lot of young people, herself included, enjoy wearing headphones to listen to music or play games. However, most of them don’t realize the harm that headphones can cause if they’re not careful.

Antariksha took a survey of the student body to measure their headphone use, then she contacted a local audiologist to visit the school and conduct hearing tests and ear examines on 33 of the students. Antariksha said her research found that students with hearing loss had in many cases been using headphones regularly for three years or more. The last step in the project was coming up educational materials so students understood the dangers of constantly exposing their ears to loud sounds.

Asha Sharma said she was so proud to shepherd her students through competitions from the Eastern Iowa contest in Burlington, to the regional contest in Cedar Rapids, then the State Science Fair in Ames, all the way to the International Science Fair in Atlanta. These five state competitors will return with new ideas for projects next year, and Sharma said she’s hopeful that even more students will join the team.