Creed Sisters Capture School Science Fair Honors

December 2005 - Kotzebue, AK

Every year in Kotzebue, the Northwest Arctic Borough School District sponsors science fairs for its students, both in Kotzebue alone and district-wide. Students are encouraged to participate but not required.

In 2005 Deirdre Creed's science fair project explored the importance of eating a nutritious breakfast. Following the scientific method, Deedee set up an experiment that measured academic performance of some of her fellow elementary students who had eaten a good breakfast and those who had not. The young scientist concluded that her data did support the idea that eating a nutritious breakfast increases academic performance. As a third grader at the time, Deirdre's project won first place overall in the science project competition for elementary students district-wide.

Then-eighth-graders Tiffany Creed and her best friend Stephanie Thompson focused their science project on alternative energy. Tiff and Steph's experiment produced electricity using a hamster on a hamster wheel. First, they had to build the stand and set up for the system to generate electricity. They solicited cracker-jack technical assistance from Kotzebue Middle/High School's shop teacher. Tiffany and Stephanie's project demonstrated that the hamster on the wheel could generate enough power to get a little glimmer out of a tiny Christmas tree light.

While putting together their project, Tiffany and Stephanie studied the principals of of electric generation. They also studied the local electric cooperative's wind farm project. Kotzebue Electric Association, which is owned by local electric consumers, operates the state's oldest utility wind farm, generating electricity from the Northwest Arctic region's notoriously high winds.

KEA's 8-year-old wind farm, located just outside of Kotzebue, saves about $190,000 a year in electicity costs, writes Jeannette J. Lee, whose Associated Press article appeared in the Anchorage Daily News on Nov. 14, 2005. Cost savings are passed on to customers "after basic costs," says Brad Reeve, KEA's general manager.

"Nearly all of Alaska's ore than 200 remote communities rely on expensive diesel for electricity and heat," Lee writes. "As costs rise, wind farms are slowly spreading to villages in Alaska, a state with the largest total area of premium wind power in the nation, according to state and federal statistics."

With the cost of fossil fuels skyrocketing worldwide, Tiffany and Stephanie's project on alternative energy was both topical and timely. Their efforts captured first place prize in the district-wide middle school competition, which sent them to Anchorage for the statewide science competition, where their honors included a first-place award in their team project category.