National Tainan Girls' Senior High School Students Win Bronze Medal at Canada-Wide Science Fair
National Tainan Girls' Senior High School third-year students, Sung Pei-Jung 宋佩容and Lee Chia-Yi 李佳怡represented Taiwan at the 2024 Canada-Wide Science Fair and won a bronze medal with their project titled Ramie Thread-based Microfluidic Reader of Common Pollutant Concentration.
This annual science fair, held at Carleton University in Ottawa, is Canada's largest science fair for young people in grades 7 to 12 with a passion for science. Established in 1962, it has a long history of promoting youth engagement and innovation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, showcasing young people's enthusiasm for scientific research and development.
The 2024 competition, which took place from May 26 to 31, featured 385 young scientists, from Canada and from abroad, who showcased 342 innovative projects. The majority of winning entries in this year’s competition reflected current trends and presented practical scientific applications.
Sung and Lee integrated environmental ecology, local plants, and indigenous traditional knowledge into their project. They utilized fiber threads made from ramie, a common plant in Taiwan, to develop a modular system for convenient and accurate measurement of concentration of solutions. Their innovative approach uses the relationship between chromatographic lengths of dyes and ions on ramie threads to effectively determine solution concentrations. The module is compact and portable, easy to use visually, requires minimal amounts of reagent, and is cost-effective. Moreover, it can be used to effectively promote compliance with environmental standards in wastewater discharge from factories, thereby making a significant contribution to environmental conservation efforts.
The work of these final year senior high school students from Taiwan stood out in a field of outstanding international competitors, and they were awarded a bronze medal.