Evangelina Marquez and Esmeralda Lopez had the winning ingredients at Friday’s STEM – or Science Technology Engineering Mathematics – Fair at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Manteca.
That’s even with the execution of the first-place “Exploding Baggie” project springing a leak.
“It was a little disappointing that the baggie had a hole in it (to prevent it from popping),” said Lopez, who is a fourth-grade student at Veritas Elementary School.
She and Marquez, a fifth grader at Shasta, spent the past weeks on their project of placing a folded paper towel inside a sealable plastic sandwich bag, with the active ingredients being vinegar and baking soda.
The result of that was an exploding baggie, which was enough to impress the judges in this first-ever event held in the Education Room.
Taking second was the “Water Filter” project by Sophie Barrau, Haley Camara, and Simone Brown. All three attend Lincoln, with Barrau and Camara in fifth and fourth grade, respectively, and Brown going into first grade.
Together, they developed a filtering system made of cotton balls, coarse sand, fine sand, coffee filters and a two-liter soda bottle to clean out dirty water. “You could use this on a camping trip,” Camara said.
Madyson Geddes, Gabriela Castillo and Rachel August was thrilled that their “Four Types of Slime” project took third.
They used a combination of liquid starch, Elmer’s Glue, food colorings, and corn starch to make their slime.
Madison Schober, a fourth-grade student at Shasta, did the “Balloon Challenge,” airing up a toy balloon using baking soda poured into a bottle with vinegar.
Other projects included the “Exploding Rainbow” and the “Exploding Volcano.”
Melinda Paulie, Team Coordinator at the local Boys & Girls Club, and Education Coordinator Ashley Williams led in putting together the STEM Fair. “We used to have a Science Fair,” Paulie said.
Club members picked out their experiment and made posters explaining their project along with the specifics involved.
“They had fun with it,” Williams said.

To contact reporter Vince Rembulat, e-mail vrembulat@mantecabulletin.com.