A diverse range of impressive projects filled the Mt. Hope High School cafeteria on Tuesday evening as the school’s annual science fair awarded 10 first place participants who will now move on to the state Science Fair.

A browse through the over 85 entrants into the fair showed students pursuing a scientific interest in a wide array of fields, from the effects of global warming and herbal supplements on microorganisms, how to make the most efficient windmill, the potential health effects of essential oils, how to best cleanse a makeup brush, and even a completely 3-D printed prosthetic hand.

Ten of the entrants received a nod to move onto the state science fair, where they will be able to further refine their projects and compete against students from all over Rhode Island.

One of those students, junior Lucy O’Brien, took home the “Best in Show” ribbon for her expansive project that looked into an experimental method being researched as a possible way to eliminate polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS, the so-called “forever chemicals” found in many everyday items such as nonstick coating on cooking pans that have been found to be one of the most pervasive and potentially harmful substances affecting all of humanity, every day).

As O’Brien explained, the method involves a process called pyrolysis. At a basic level, what happens is micro bubbles are formed within a liquid medium (in her case, she used water) using ultrasound waves. Those little bubbles expand due to the change in pressure caused by the waves.

“These micro-bubbles are really tiny, and this all happens within a fraction of a second, but when they collapse to their smallest radius, there’s so much concentrated pressure inside the bubble that it creates temperatures up to 5,000 Kelvin,” O’Brien explained, which is close to the temperature of the surface of the sun. “It’s these high temperatures that are hypothesized to break up PFAS.”

O’Brien, who according to her dad, Jonathan, is a self-motivated student with interests in math, environmental issues, and computer science, said it would be her dream to continue to pursue her studies at Brown. She already completed an internship with the university over the previous summer, and worked with a professor of engineering on the complex world of bubble dynamics as a piece of her science fair project.

“She’s very focused and she definitely is very passionate about anything, really, that she does,” Jonathan said. “It’s exciting to watch and see how it’s been fostered.”

The full list of first-place winners includes:

Best In Fair: Lucy O’Brien - Mathematically Modeling the Thermal Decomposition of PFAS by Acoustic Cavitation

Principal’s Award: Alona Leonard and Taylor Rodrigues - How Does Temperature Affect the Bioluminescence of Dinoflagellates?

First Place Recipients:

• Lucy O’Brien
• Chenxiang Ma (Do Herbal Products Affect One’s Heart Rate?)
• Nathan Vicente and Colin Maloney (Windmill Efficiency)
• Taylor Rodrigues and Alona Leonard
• Emma Coelho and Elena Oliveira (The Effects of Spirodela polyrhiza and Lemna minor duckweed on Anthropogenic copper pollution in aquatic ecosystems)
• Abby Rodrigues and Mekayla Neves (How Does Ocean Acidification Affect Mollusk Shells in RI?)
• Nathan Calouro (The Effects of Essential Oil on Superworms: Green Pest Management)
• Cohen Ferreira and Brennan Perry (Honey Heals: Antibacterial Effects of Honey)
• Aiden Gagner and Luke Daniel (Using Bioplastics to Make an Eco-friendly Version of Paper)
• Maream Francis (Building the Future: The Effects of Hemcrete on the Environment)