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Ally Pen and Pohien Ear |
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| Pohien Ear et Ally Pen |
We never thought we would do an experiment. We
thought that those projects were for geniuses only. As first-time
participants in the Science Fair, we prepared an instructional activity
on the cloning of African violets. But something captured our attention
at the Science Fair. We noticed that young people our age were presenting
experiments. That gave our confidence a boost and pushed us to do
the same. Our desire to confront an even greater challenge, to feel
that we had completed a project that was really ours and, of course,
to overcome our poor performance at the 1997 Canada-wide Science Fair
with our instructional activity led us to try our hand at experimentation.
Naturally, we started out by doing a lot of reading. We also let our
imaginations run wild. As far as we were concerned, any idea was welcome.
That's when we came up with the idea of a glowing tree. We visited
the biotechnology research institute and, as a result of technical
problems, we were forced to shelve the idea. We did, however, decide
to construct a DNA molecule that codes for a glowing receptor. Of
course, our project wasn't an immediate success. We did our experiments
over and over and wasted a lot of time. But we were persistent and
refused to give up. Our results didn't correspond to our initial hypotheses,
which led us to ask new questions and to do more research.
This project not only helped us establish contacts with researchers, but
also taught us to apply a scientific process and enabled us to discover
the real world of science. With our creativity, curiosity and persistence,
we were able to discover the world of experimentation.
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© 2002, Conseil de développement du loisir scientifique
(CDLS). This document is distributed by the Conseil de développement
du loisir scientifique.
For more information, visit our Web site at www.cdls.qc.ca. |
The opinions
expressed in this section are those of the authors and do not
necessarily
reflect the opinions of Merck Frosst or its employees. |
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