Debasri Jena, a Grade 10 students from Hat High, won the Ted Rogers Innovation Award ate the Southeast Alberta Regional Science Fair with her dehydration sensor that tested the dehydration detecting capabilities of various fruit and vegetable extracts.--SUBMITTED PHOTO
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A Grade 10 student at Medicine Hat High School is one of 61 high school students across Canada to be recognized for completing a STEM project that has commercial potential.
Debasri Jena won the Ted Rogers Innovation Award with her dehydration sensor project at the Kiwanis Southeast Alberta Regional Science Fair.
“It was pretty cool, I actually had no clue until someone said, ‘Hey you should check your email’ and I found out that I won,” said Jena with a laugh. “I was really excited.”
Jena took extracts from different fruits and vegetables including blueberries, red cabbage and turnips and turned them into a solution. She then put pH buffers in to test the colour change between them and used a substance called agar in place of human skin.
“For ethics reasons I couldn’t use actual human skin of course,” said the 15-year-old. “I changed the pH of the agar and the temperature to simulate the difference in pH and temperature in human skin when they are dehydrated, and I observed for colour changes within these solutions to see which would work best as a dehydration sensor.”
Jena found the red cabbage solution had the biggest change in colour – turning from a light red to a dark blue colour over a smaller pH range.
“It was definitely the best solution and I think that can be used to determine if someone is dehydrated or not and to what extent,” she said.
Jena had to submit a five-page report and a video of her project for the science fair this year, which was held virtually. She has been working on this project for two years now, an idea that started last year when she was at CAPE.
“I was getting more interested into biology and chemistry before I started this project, so I went out of my way to find something that incorporated both of these and that I could also use to help people,” said Jena.
Jena is taking part in the national science fair starting Monday where she will show her project to students across Canada. Typically, the students would get to go on a trip to Ottawa for the science fair, but this year due to COVID-19 the event is taking place virtually.
“I saw that they were doing what they could to make the experience more fun for everybody involved and we still have the opportunity to meet new people from all over Canada, so I’m still excited about it,” she said.
Jena says she had a lot of help from her science teacher and superintendent at CAPE, Teresa Di Ninno, and her mentor Peter Wallis.
“They offered me a lot of help and I don’t think I could have done this project without them. They gave me the resources I needed and the resources for my research and experiment,” said Jena.
