Moravian Academy was well represented by 18 Middle School students and 12 Upper School students at the PJAS (Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science) state competition, held at the main campus of Penn State in State College, PA on May 19th.

During the competition, students presented projects to state-level judges. This year’s student project categories included physics, engineering, chemistry, computer science, botany, behavioral science, computer science, mathematics, biochemistry, and microbiology.

To qualify for the state competition, the students had to score a first or perfect score at the PJAS – Region 3 Competition held in February at Northampton Community College. (See the post about how our students performed at the regional competition here.)

Congratulations to our student awardees!

Perfect Score Award Recipients (score: 5.0)

• Avi Singh ’20 – “An Investigation Into the Effects of Misophonia”
• Kanchan Gupta ’24– “Music: Help or Distraction for Testing?”
• Rayna Malhotra ’24 – “The Synergistic Effect of Natural Oils on Antibiotics”
• Anjali Shankar ’23 – “Effect of Anticoagulants on Coagulation of Blood: Stimulation”
• Wisdom Ufondu ’23 – “Turning Heat into Electricity Using the Seebeck Effect”

First Award Recipients (score: 4.0  to 4.9)

• Yiyi Chen ’22 – “Art Gallery Theorem”
• Mikail Jaffer ’22 – “Using TEG’s to Generate Electricity with an Integrated Graphene Circuit”
• Sophie Lee ’22 – “The Ant on a Rubber Rope”
• Samit Mohapatra ’22 – “Heavy Metal Removal from Wastewater by Activated Carbon”
• Eva Saramya ’22 – “The Effects of Water Impurities on Plants”
• Niketh Surya ’21 – “The Spicy Life: Can the Bacteria Take the Heat?”
• Divik Verma ’22 – “Using Various Proofs to Show that .999…is Equal to 1”
• Okezue Bell ’23– “Health in IoT: Wearable Monitors”
• Ben Edelman ’23 – “How Does Air Pressure Affect the Speed of A Soccer Ball?”
• Gia Gupta ’23- “Corrosion of Metal”
• Rosemary John ’23– “Soil pH vs. Plant Growth”
• Ryan Stubblefield ’23 – “The Effect of Corked Bat on a Baseball’s Distance”
• Alizeh Ali ’24- “Moisturizers: What Types Actually Prevent Dryness in Skin?”
• Chessie Bartolacci ’24- “Number of Coils vs. Electromagnetic Strength”
• Anya Chadha ’24– “The Stroop Effect”
• Ryan Cheng ’24- “Mobile Sensing for Road Hazards”
• Krish Gupta ’24– “How Heat Affects the Movement of Water”
• Nayva Manne ’24– “Which Seeds Can Survive in Cold Temperatures?”
• Pranavi Marella ’24 – “The Josephus Problem”

Second Award Recipients (score: 3.0 to 3.9)

• Lily Eyvazzadeh ’22 – “Using Oohos to Reduce Plastic Pollution”
• Katie Shnier ’22 – “Pitch, Sound Waves, and Crystal Wine Glasses”
• Yan Yu ’23– “Can Households Degrade Plastic?”
• Sebastian Malaver ’24- “Gear Up for Speed”

We’d also like to recognize:

Nader Rifai ’21 and Kaitlyn Lee ’23, who served as technicians at the event. (Patrick Johnson ‘23 was also  selected to serve as a technician but was unable to attend.); and

Neil Deshmukh ’20, Rhea Malhotra ‘20, Adrian Vanegas ‘23, Rohan Mehta ‘23, and Michael Alchaer ‘23, who all qualified to compete at the state level, but were unable to attend the competition.