Participation in the fair was open to students in fifth through 12th grade from Clinton, Essex, Franklin and St. Lawrence counties and Akwesasne. The students competed for a variety of prizes, including fully-funded trips to larger science fairs in Los Angeles, Syracuse and Zimbabwe. A list of award-winning student projects will be available from Terra later this week.

Before packing up for the day, the students participated in a 45-minute public session. Members of the public — including some Paul Smith’s College faculty, students and neighbors — came to take a look at the students’ displays and ask them questions about their projects.

Abigail DiBartolomeo, a fifth-grade student from Boquet Valley Central School District in the Elizabethtown-Westport area, wanted to test how different patterns of 3D printed cubes hold up to the pressure of a hydraulic press. She said that she doesn’t know what sparked her interest in 3D printing, but her project could have positive implications in engineering.

She tested 13 different infill designs in otherwise identical 3D-printed cubes, ranging from a grid to lines to triangles to zig zags, and then pressure-tested all of the cubes in a hydraulic press to see how well each design held up. The strongest design was one that had four crosses in the center, similar to the decorative edge of a wrought-iron fence.

Emma Stevens, a student from Brasher Falls Central School District in St. Lawrence County, poses next to her ant farm project at the Terra Northeast Regional STEM Fair at Paul Smith’s College on Saturday. (Enterprise photo — Sydney Emerson)

“I think it’s because it has more points of strength,” she said of the winning design.

Some of the cubes even exploded or ruptured under the force of the hydraulic press. DiBartolomeo had them on display along with the intact cubes.

“When this one popped, my dad was more inclined to wear safety glasses,” she said, referring to one of the ruptured cubes.

Emma Stevens, a senior at Brasher Falls Central School District in St. Lawrence County, chose to make an ethical ant farm as her project after learning about the controversy surrounding the blue agar gel that most ant farms use.

She began her project in September and continued to research until January. However, she kept running into roadblocks; parts of the project were delayed as she experienced a medical episode this winter and also participated in the school’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” In March, though, her teacher finally secured the ants for the terrarium and the project was a go — about a week before her deadline.

Phoebe Karkoski, a student from Moriah Central School, poses with her project on realism in video games at the Terra Northeast Regional STEM Fair at Paul Smith’s College on Saturday. Not pictured is her project partner, Lydia McLaughlin, who could not attend the fair that day. (Enterprise photo — Sydney Emerson)

“I didn’t think any of this was going to happen … and now I have an ant farm in our school that our community is helping out with,” she said.

Stevens said that she learned a lot about ants, project management and perseverance through her project.

“I really did not think this was going to happen. I told my teacher there was no way I was coming (to the STEM fair) … because I thought it was going to fail miserably. But it didn’t,” she said.

Paul Anderson, a sixth-grade student from Moriah Central School, loves video games. For his project, he chose to measure the reaction times of students who play video games and compare them to the reaction times of students who don’t play video games. In the end, students who played video games for two or more hours a day came out ahead.

“Gamers did have a faster reaction time than non-gamers,” Anderson said. “That was my hypothesis.”

Ellie LeRoy, left, and Cora Benardot, both students from Franklin Academy in Malone, explain their project on cell phone use in schools and cyberbullying to a fairgoer. (Enterprise photo — Sydney Emerson)

Other students had projects focused on video games, as well. Moriah Central School students Phoebe Karkoski and Lydia McLaughlin did a project in which they studied realism in video games.

“We always like to play video games and we thought, what would be a good realistic video game? And then, what’s not realistic that we have on our Xbox?”

They studied the characteristics of four games — The Sims, Fortnite, Fall Guys and Minecraft — and compared things that were realistic and unrealistic in the games. They hit some snags along the way, losing some of their research a few weeks before the fair, but were able to reach some conclusions about what makes a realistic game, such as multiple players, free movement and customization options.

Abigail DiBartolomeo, a fifth-grade student from Boquet Valley Central School District, explains the 3D-printed components of her project to fairgoers at the Terra Northeast Regional STEM Fair at Paul Smith’s College on Saturday. (Enterprise photo — Sydney Emerson)