Here’s a question for those of you who attended junior high school during the past century: If your school held a science fair, what was your project? Did you make a plaster of Paris volcano that spewed vinegar and baking soda lava? Maybe you planted bean seeds in different soils and monitored their growth?
Young people born in the current century engage in science projects that are far more sophisticated. Consider Arianna Roberts, a soon-to-be eighth-grader at R.J. Grey Junior High in Acton, Massachusetts. Last summer, she took advantage of the Great American Eclipse to capture images of the Sun’s inner corona. Her work would help scientists understand not only the intensity of the corona, but also the motions of coronal inflows and loops, and interactions between the corona and solar prominences.
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