On Sunday, May 21, seventh grade winners of Moriah’s science fair went on to compete in the Inter-Yeshiva Science Congress at HALB. Students from 11 other yeshivot presented their projects in front of two judges. Two of the Moriah teams ended up taking top honors winning first and third place.

In first place was Annabel Kermier’s project titled “Musical Memory: How Does Listening to Music Affect a Person’s Ability to Memorize Information?” She asked people to memorize a combination of 10 numbers while listening to different types of music. She found that most music, with the exception of classical, distracts you from remembering. Classical music ended up being the best to study with if you are going to listen to music while studying. She concluded, however, that no music is still preferable. Students, on average, were able to memorize 9/10 numbers in the sequence without music, 8/10 while listening to classical music and 6/10, or fewer, if listening to pop, jazz or rock music.

In third place were Samantha Kanner and Rachel Abramovitz with their project titled “Produce Powered Clocks: Which Type of Produce Generates the Highest Voltage when Powering a Clock?” They built closed circuits hooked up to lemons, carrots, bananas, oranges or potatoes and connected the food to a clock. The girls measured the voltage of each produce item and concluded that both lemons and potatoes generated the highest voltage: 1.5 V of electricity—the same as a AA battery! The food with the lowest voltage was the carrot, but it was still able to power the clock.

The other Moriah students who competed and earned Honorable Mentions are: Joshua Katz, Zachary Benkel and Ezra Csillag with “Super Stretchy Slime: What is the Effect of Temperature on the Ability of Slime to Stretch?,” Kayla Adler and Sophia Kohn with “The Toys that Make you Fidget: How Do Different Fidget Toys Affect Your Focus?” and Jarrett Lazarus with “Sugary Drinks: How Much Sugar is in Different Drinks?”