By MaryHelen Swanson
Ashley Behrendt, grade 4, and Nicole Theis, grade 5, were the first place winners in the C.E.Jacobson Elementary School’s 2008 Inventor’s Fair Friday, March 28.
Their invention was called The Shell Catcher and is used to catch sunflower seed shells at places like baseball games, rather than tossing them on the ground.
The judges had their work cut out for them as there were 18 good entries in the fair.
The inventions ranged from the Breakfast Pillow to glue in a pump bottle.
Second place went to Faith Tauer who created a band aid dispenser, The Bandage Roll, the purpose of which is to make it easier to get band aids out of a box.
There was a tie for third place between Colin Ouellette and Shane Sempel’s Easy Drier 2, a concoction of pvc tubing mounted on a board for drying wet winter clothing and boots, and The Geriatric Egglet Cracker created by Molly Ringer and Emily Haug. This invention came from an idea to help Grandma crack eggs without getting eggshells in the mixture.
Inventor Fair organizers Maureen Sybrant and Kelly Gunderson, both kindergarten teachers at the school, were pleased with the turnout this year and the creativity of the inventions.
Judges were Harold Lind, Don Cardinal and Gail Stepp. The students are required to provide a log documenting the process from beginning to end with witness signatures.
They must identify a purpose for their invention and it must be original, either in the problem it addresses or it must appear to be better than an existing invention.
The student must show evidence that the invention will work and be able to demonstrate such during the oral presentation with the judges.
Each year the students who participate in the Inventor’s Fair at Jacobson Elementary do an excellent job proving that necessity is the mother of invention.
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