Students could work on what’s important to them, and that’s the great thing; they can be as different as night and day.”

Kathleen M. Beebe, chairwoman of the PHS Science Department

Toothpaste, baseball physics, breakfast and more

Here’s a brief sampling of some other projects featured in the Portsmouth High School Science Fair held Tuesday.

Five-second rule

Grace Van Petten decided to test often-cited food hygiene concept that says food that falls on the floor is still safe to eat if it’s picked up within five seconds.

Grace experimented using apple slices and culturing bacteria.

Smile!

George St. Peter’s “The Winning Grin” tested various, name-brand whitening toothpastes’ effectiveness on four liquids that are prone to stain teeth. (Crest 3D White was the winner, according to George’s tests.)

The best angle

Chris Chagnon’s “Physics Side of Baseball” set to find out how far a baseball travels when thrown at various angles. His experiment, carried out on the PHS football field, concluded that a 45-degree angle made the ball travel the farthest.

The most important meal

Sam Stamoulis’ project, “The Most Important Meal of the Day,” tested a simple question: Does eating breakfast before school improve your grade point average (GPA)?

Sam surveyed 26 students in his class and concluded that those who ate breakfast before classes did indeed have a higher GPA than those who don’t, “but in this case, not by much,” he said.

Can you hear me?

Kate Famiglietti’s “Can You Hear Me Now?” examined which gauge of copper wire produced the most sound in a crystal radio. As she predicted, the 28 gauge produced more sound than the 22 gauge because it’s thinner and therefore easier to wrap into a tight and compact coil.

Fighting E. coli

Riley Turcotte studied the affects of antibiotics and natural remedies on the growth of E. coli. Riley’s conclusion? The best results came from antibiotics, especially Ampicillin.

Ella West tackled a similar subject in her project, “E. coli resistance in serial solutions of various disinfectants,” the tests for which she conducted in a professional laboratory.

“The interesting thing about this is that I had her mom (LeAnne Foss West) as a student,” said Kathleen Beebe, who chairs the PHS Science Department.

“It was nice when it was siblings — now it’s mothers and fathers,” Ms. Beebe said with a laugh.

PORTSMOUTH — Tom Brady didn’t cheat, and Daniel Carnevale can prove it.

Daniel, a freshman at Portsmouth High School, designed his science fair project as a rebuttal to Deflategate, the accusation that the New England Patriots quarterback ordered the deliberate deflating of footballs used in the AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts in 2015.

Daniel hypothesized that cold weather — and not a cheating superstar — was the reason why some of New England’s balls were found to come in under the required minimum air pressure. 

“The purpose was to see if the change in temperature does have an effect on air pressure. I’m a Patriots fan, and I wanted to see if I could make an argument that they did not cheat,” Daniel said as he pointed to data he collected that was displayed on a trifold board inside the old gymnasium at PHS on Tuesday.

“As you can see, when the balls were placed in the colder environment, their air pressures went down in every trial,” he said. “After every trial, I waited 48 hours. There could be an argument made that it was the temperatures that deflated the balls — and not the Patriots.”

He tested all kinds of different balls — football, soccer, basketball, etc. “They all stayed with the trend that colder, the air pressure goes down, and warmer, the air pressure goes up,” he said.

Daniel was then asked straight up if he thought Tom Brady cheated on that day four years ago.

“No,” he declared without hesitation.

About 36 sophomores and 89 freshman participated in the school science fair, according to Kathleen M. Beebe, who chairs the PHS Science Department. 

Students were allowed to select their own topic over the summer and then present a research paper, trifold board and a log book of research. 

“Students could work on what’s important to them, and that’s the great thing; they can be as different as night and day,” Ms. Beebe said. “As long as the students can speak to what they really learned from the project, that’s pretty much what we’re looking for.”

On Tuesday, students presented their findings orally to a host of judges, including members of the Town Council and School Committee, school district officials, staff from Naval Station Newport, business people and parents.

One of the judges was council member Daniel Abbott, who reviewed a group of ninth-grade projects. Ms. Abbott said she was impressed with what she saw, including one project that analyzed information retention from one’s high school education.

“He tested a series of adults on the material he was learning now, to see if there was any correlation between age and how much they remembers. And there was; the older the people, the less they remembered,” she said.

She also judged freshman Jordan Burnley’s project, which examined whether age or gender were factors in determining which word a person was likely to hear in the “Yanny or Laurel” auditory illusion that went viral last year. 

In the brief audio recording, which can be found on YouTube and elsewhere, listeners hear a man say either “Laurel” or “Yanny.” 

It’s similar to an earlier visual puzzle that also went viral: a picture of a dress which some people described as gold and white in color, while others saw blue and white.

“I wanted to see if age or gender affected it,” said Jordan. “My hypothesis was, I thought that the older people got, they would hear ‘Laurel,’ because my research said as people got older, their high-frequency hearing diminishes — and that’s what’s present in ‘Yanny.’”

Her hypothesis wasn’t proven, however, since more people in the 60-80 age group heard “Yanny,” she said. Among teens, more people heard “Laurel,” and for “middle ages,” it was a mix, she said. She didn’t find much of a consistent pattern in gender, either. 

“That kind of confused me, because my research said one thing and the results said the other,” said Jordan, noting the results could have been different had she used a larger data base.

Although the results were inconclusive, it was a fun experiment anyway, she said. “I’m not a huge science person, but this was trendy and something I was interested in. And it wasn’t too hard,” she said.

(For the record, Ms. Abbott said she hears “Laurel,” while Jordan hears “Yanny.”)

Spongy soundproofing

Nathan Janssen wanted to find out what type of material was the most effective for soundproofing.

“I found out that the sponge was able to soundproof the best, because it was dense and thick but also foam-like, so it was able to be compressed to the touch,” said Nathan, who used a smart phone and two different apps to measure decibel readings during his tests.

According to his research, denser objects are good for sound blockage, while softer objects are better at absorbing echo. 

“I learned that the softer, more foam-like materials were able to soundproof better than denser and other materials,” said Nathan, who’d like to be an engineer some day. “This contradicted by (hypothesis) a little bit, but it still made sense that the echo absorption was a little more influential to the whole soundproof thing.”

Parting prediction

Getting back to Daniel Carnevale and his Deflategate-busting project, he offered up a prediction for the Patriots divisional playoff game against the Los Angeles Chargers this Sunday. 

“I’m hoping for a Patriots’ win — 28-17,” he said.