Let the presentations begin - Monday

So the day begins with a long walk to breakfast. One of the things about being in a city that's relatively flat, with mountains in the background, and all the hotels being a little "large scale" is that things sometimes appear closer than they are! It took us 25 minutes or so to walk to our breakfast spot, but the fresh air actually felt pretty good. One of our students, Xingyu, was writing an AP exam this morning as well.

After breakfast we split up again .. some students having to go back to the convention centre for safety violations, or to put materials that they worked on yesterday at their booths. We set up time slots for each of the students to present their projects to pairs of chaperones who will critique them. Each student has a 20 minute time slot .. 10 minutes to present, and 10 minutes to answer chaperone questions. Spencer and Caitlin took some students, Ray and Susan took another group, and Liane and I had the rest. Stef was helping students at the convention centre, and Gus was "scouting out" some of our next meals!

I often get asked what the student's topics are, so, for some examples, here's what Liane and I listened to today.

Sugar Production, Waste Reduction - Turning Wastepaper into Fermentable Sugars for Bloethanol;

Optimization of Hydroxyapatite Bioceramics Deposited by Suspension Plasma Spraying;

The Aging of Mesenchymal Stem Cells;

Probabilistic Evolution in Dynamic Equilibrium; and

Making Mysterious Molecular Misfits - Finding KF4- and Super Anions.

In the afternoon, Conan O'Brien appeared at the Science Fair. It wasn't announced that he was going to be there, but he wandered around looking at projects and chatting with the students.

Some of our students were there, others chose to continue work on their projects or revise their presentations after the morning critique. Some chose the "hang out by the pool" option instead of either of those.

While we've seen lots of students and chaperones already, tonight at the Opening Ceremonies is the first time that we will all be at the same place at once. A buffet dinner is served, then we all head into the Opening Ceremonies themselves.

The event is MC'd by a local news host, Wendy, who .. how do we say this politely .. is very enthusiastic. She tells everyone that instead of shaking hands for the rest of the week, we are to bump elbows instead. In her enthusiasm, she reminds everyone not to sneeze into the air, but to sneeze into your elbows instead. Being the bright kids they are, everyone immediately recognizes that we are not sure that this is a significant improvement, to sneeze into your elbow, then bump it directly on someone else instead of shaking their hand .. but I digress ....

Remember though, that when the elbow bump replaces the handshake worldwide, that it all started here at IISEF 2009!

The "warm up" act for the ceremony are some performers from Cirque. They are absolutely amazing! If you look closely at the pictures on the right or left, you will see that this gentleman is balancing on top of a board, on top of 6 or 7 cylindrical items stacked on top of each other. There were a couple of other acts besides this one.

Here are some statistics on this year's fair.

There are a record 1563 students with 1223 projects (some are individual projects, some are teams). These students are from another record 56 countries, including Columbia and Viet Nam who are here for the first time. 20% of the projects either already have a patent, or have a patent under consideration. 54% are Male, 46% are Female. As per usual, this last statistic elicits equally loud whoops for both sets of numbers! 37% are Seniors (Grade 12), 32% are Juniors (Grade 11), 19% are Sophomores (Grade 10) and 12% are Freshman (Grade 9).

The official them of the Fair is "Inspired To Change Our World". (The unofficial theme of course is "wash your hands", as jars of hand sanitizer are everywhere .. including in the student gift bags) A message delivered by Intel CEO, Craig Barrett, challenged the students to make a difference. He also reminded them that the two things that no-one can ever take away from you are a good education, and your personal integrity .. and to make sure that you remember both in your professional accomplishments.

One of the highlights of the night is always the "Shout Out" where representatives from each country go on stage with the posters that they made. Here's a picture of all of the country posters, and the student representatives. The Canadian students had unanimously chosen Claire to represent us after her disqualification from the fair. She was absolutely beaming on stage.

After the ceremony we returned to the hotel for yet another party in Stef and Spencer's room.