Lethbridge student takes home prize for STEM fair project
By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman For the Lethbridge Herald on May 19, 2021.
Senator Joyce Fairbairn Middle School student Kay Spencer is among 61 high school students across Canada who have taken home a $100 cash award as well as receiving recognition and other prizing as part of the Ted Rogers Innovation Awards program, an initiative of Youth Science Canada, with support from Ted Rogers Community Grants.
“We’re extremely proud of these students, who come from all corners of our country and are united by a goal of making the world a better place for all,” said Reni Barlow, executive director of Youth Science Canada.
Regional youth science fairs began more than sixty years ago, and the Ted Rogers Innovation Award was added to programming in 2018 to recognize Canadian students who express an entrepreneurial spirit and demonstrate commercial potential for their project.
The award is part of an ongoing national partnership between Youth Science Canada and Rogers that has included, to date, more than $150,000 spread across fairs and national projects that encourage science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) among Canadian youth of all backgrounds.
Award winners are also eligible to receive enrolment tuition in the week-long Youth Science Canada/York University STEM boot camp, held annually in August through the Bergeron Entrepreneurs in Science & Technology (BEST) program.
The timing is ripe for all things STEM/youth in science as Canada-Wide Science Fair ‘Ottawa 2021’ is happening this week and Kay Spencer will be representing Lethbridge with her project Pennies from Heaven.
“My science fair project Pennies from Heaven is about using information that I collected from my solar panels and analyzing that data, to have an energy efficient home and being able to run appliances at a time that is suitable,” said Spencer.
Spencer started this project when she was in grade 6 in 2020. Taking advantage of the fact that her parents had solar panels installed on their roof, she decided to embark on the project that has earned her a spot in the Canada-Wide Science Fair this year.
“Two summers ago, my family had solar panels installed on our roof. I was interested in how much energy they were generating and how much it was benefiting our family. I was inspired to learn how to write code to communicate with my family’s solar infrastructure, analyze the data, and explore how to use this information to schedule household energy consumption,” added Spencer.
Canada-Wide Science Fair (CWSF), the country’s largest annual youth science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) event, bringing together top young scientists and their projects, selected by a national network of over 100 regional STEM fairs in every province and territory.
For his project she had to learn how to write code using python, in order to obtain the data from the solar panels and convert it into graphable data.
Spencer initially tried to analyze how much energy it would take to run the ice maker in her fridge so it wouldn’t be taking up energy that her family was paying for, but it would use energy from the solar panels on the roof and therefore be more energy efficient.
The name for her project came from the idea of saving money while using solar panels.
“I thought it fit because the solar panels are collecting energy from the sun which is sort of like heaven and pennies is just a word that represents a currency,” explained Spencer.
Spencer applied to the regional STEM fair on her own, as it is not a school activity and from there, she got accepted into the CWSF.
“I’m in grade 7 so I’m one of the youngest people that will probably be in the fair as it is from grade 7 to 12,” said Spencer.
Spencer is not only one of the youngest in the fair, but she is also the only one from Lethbridge.
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