Some of you can look forward to enjoying within the next several years a
thrilling experience.
Some morning in May you will bid your parents farewell, walk up the
steps of an airliner, and touch down a few hours later in a distant
city. For the next five days you will be caught up in the excitement and
fascination of the National Science Fair-International!
The full impact of your nation’s science fair hits you the morning you
set up your exhibit in the auditorium. You knew that you had a good
exhibit when you entered the district fair back home in March. (Since
this is your second year of serious competition, and you have improved
both your science project and your exhibit, you weren’t too surprised to
win there.) But regional and statewide competition is even tougher, so
you were holding your breath until they finally called your name!
Now here you are, and as you appraise the 400 other exhibits going up
besides yours, you realize this is the “big league”. These guys and gals
are really good. But some of your awe evaporates as you talk with your
neighbors, and while you help the pretty blonde with the guppies
position her heavy aquaria. Win or not, this is going to be fun!
And so it is—during the tension of the judging the next day, when you
show your exhibit to the public the day after that, and throughout the
tours of research laboratories and industrial processing plants that
follow. In conversations with the judges, in the varied social contacts
with more than 400 fellow exhibitors from the United States and several
foreign countries, you get a fresh look at the rewards of serious
scientific endeavor. One evening you listen enthralled by the startling
concept being explained by one of the “big men” in science. You’ve seen
his name and picture in newspapers, textbooks, and technical journals,
and there he stands, talking seriously to you and your fellow
exhibitors. As he explains a problem that has puzzled you, you begin to
see science as a community of kindred minds where every serious
truth-seeker is welcome, where there is no rank other than that bestowed
on active intellects, sound procedures, and reasoned, honest
conclusions.
All too soon, the week is almost over. At the Awards Banquet they are
calling the names of the winners and you sit unsurprised when the early
prizes pass you by. You’ve studied those winning exhibits, and you must
acknowledge that they have the edge on yours—one because of the very
unusual hypothesis posed and proved, the other because of the masterful
clarity with which it explains the area of investigation.
But next they name the winners of special awards, presented by the
American Chemical Society, The American Institute of Biological
Sciences, the military departments, and similar organizations, for
outstanding exhibits related to the programs of the sponsors. And here
you are on the stage, having your photograph taken with the nine other
winners of the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission’s Special Awards!
After the banquet, the AEC representative explains to you that the AEC
Special Award includes considerably more than the Certificate of
Achievement you have just received.
First, a duplicate certificate will be sent to your principal for
display among the school trophies. Then, in August you and your science
teacher will fly to Chicago for a week as exciting and rewarding as the
one you have just completed. You will be guests of the AEC’s Argonne
National Laboratory—an outstanding center for nuclear research. Your
group will spend several days behind the scenes in Argonne’s
laboratories. You will visit outstanding research facilities and science
museums in downtown Chicago. Best of all, you will have an opportunity
to discuss your interests and career plans with members of the Argonne
staff—men and women who are doing professional research in the same
areas that interest you.
What are the costs of such an experience? Only the attention you pay to
your science instruction; the thought and care you devote to a project
related to nuclear science; and the clarity and ingenuity with which you
explain that project to your classmates, teachers, and the general
public through your science fair exhibit.
[Illustration: _First Atomic Energy Commission Special Awards
winners, selected at the 13th NSFI at Seattle, photographed during
their Nuclear Research Orientation Week at the AEC’s Argonne
National Laboratory near Chicago in August 1962. High point of the
week, winners report, is the opportunity—pictured here—to talk
face-to-face with Argonne scientists who are working in areas of
research of particular interest to each student visitor._
Courtesy Argonne National Laboratory]
[Illustration: continued]
[Illustration: _1963 AEC Special Awards winners and their science
teachers spent their Nuclear Research Orientation Week at Argonne
National Laboratory. Top photograph is of Elizabeth Winstead of
Jacksonville, Florida, whose prize-winning exhibit at Albuquerque is
pictured on the cover. The photograph below hers is of William E.
Murray, Jr., of Bethesda, Maryland, who was also an AEC Special
Awards winner at Seattle in 1962._
Courtesy Argonne National Laboratory]