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Dobbs Ferry High School students made waves at the Westchester Science & Engineering Fair this year, but it wasn’t just high school students impressing judges and honing their science and presentation skills. Dobbs Ferry Middle School eighth grader Mira Williams-Ameen took home the first-place award at the Westchester Regional Middle School Science and Engineering Fair.
“My project was on the impact of light pollution on a microbiome,” said Williams-Ameen. “Light pollution affects human circadian rhythms and animal migration patterns, but less is known about its impact on plants.”
As evidenced by her first-place award and other high placements at the Tri-County Science Fair, Williams-Ameen has already developed a scientific lens through which to see the world. She began with a hypothesis that light pollution would negatively affect the microbiome on the surface of a plant. But when she found the data didn’t support her hypothesis, she wasn’t disappointed or attached to any specific outcome.
“You don’t always expect that your research will turn out the way you think it will,” Williams-Ameen said. “I’ve done other projects where the data showed the exact opposite of my hypothesis. Science is about trying to understand the relationship between two things rather than trying to prove a specific relationship.”
The DFMS eighth grader has attained all the building blocks of a great scientist and is excited by what research like this could mean for the future.
“Skyglow is when light shines up into the sky and gets reflected and diffused in the atmosphere,” Williams-Ameen explained. “It can go way beyond urban areas, and it affects animal and insect migration patterns and human sleeping patterns. I hope research like mine can lead planners to consider light pollution more when building.”
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