At the end of March, one Adair – Casey / Guthrie Center student received an important nomination.

Senior Kiersten Knobbe attended the Western Iowa Regional Science Fair, and was named an International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) Finalist. Knobbe says that this is the most prestigious science fair for high school students across the world. She tells Raccoon Valley Radio about the project that punched her ticket to Dallas, Texas.

“For my project, I was using red snapper fish scales to remove and filter the heavy metals of copper, lead and cadmium from water. And my goal is that hopefully this sort of treatment can be used in areas where there’s heavy metal crisis like what we saw in Flint, Michigan in 2014 where there was lead contaminated water. So the goal is that hopefully people can use fish scales to remove those metals or water and then make it safe for human consumption.”

Knobbe mentions that her project works by adding the fish scales to a container of water and shaking it to help get rid of the contaminants. She hopes that the method will be picked up in the future, and help provide clean water where it’s needed.