New and exciting ideas have popped up in January leading up to the second annual science fair.

While most students start creating and inventing, winners from previous years continue with improving and perfecting their experiments.

“Last year me and Valentina Tovar had to stand and wait for judges to come. After a long while they asked tons of questions, and we had to have the information remembered without looking at our board,” senior Macy Whiting said.

The competition at regionals was challenging, especially because it was the first time Akins students participated.

“We actually met with teachers and wrote scripts that we had to memorize,” Whiting said. “There was a lot of hard work involved.”

It took them about 3 hours to get all the data for the project collected, which was done by hooking up blindfolded test subjects to heart rate and blood pressure monitors while letting them smell different scents on a square of paper.

“We let them smell the scent for a minute and saw how each factor changed with each perfume,” Whiting said, “Our project was all about how smells affect people’s blood pressure and heart rate.”

This year’s science fair, however, has a greater amount of diversity of projects than the one before, the most popular category for projects being behavioral sciences.

“I’m very impressed with all the students creative effort,” said David Lopez, Career and Technology Education department chair. “I’d also like to thank the teachers who guided and helped mentor them.”

The CTE teachers sponsored the fair, requiring students to complete projects in their classes. “Some major differences from last year are that this year we had more judges and encouraged everyone to work earlier in order for them to have more time,” Lopez said. “We also had more participants this year.”

Results haven’t been released because of technical problems, but they will soon announce the top three winners advancing to regionals.

“The judges were looking mainly for consistency, creativity, and accuracy; the major goal for next year is to break 100 entries,” Lopez said.