Students place first at PJAS state competition

Little and Hornberger shine at Penn State

Courtesy photo

From left to right: Devon Zheng, Quintin Nelson, Hannah Hornberger, and Kerri Little had a chance to check out the Penn State campus last week at the PJAS state competition. Hornberger and Little each earned first place awards.

Makala Doyle, Staff Writer

On Monday, May 16, two Bellwood-Antis students placed first at the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science State competition.

Kerri Little and Hannah Hornberger both ended with first place awards, and Quintin Nelson got a second place award after presenting their projects to a group of judges at Penn State University.

Hornberger’s project tested if age affected the success of lies and what makes a good liar. Little tested to see whether non-millennials had a harsher perception of millennials than millennials themselves do using an online survey.

While it was very rewarding for all three to get to the state competition, Kerri in particular had a bittersweet overall feeling about this competition. While Kerri has continually worked hard each year since her freshman year to conduct an experiment for PJAS, and this was her last time to participate in the competition.

Little finished her PJAS career with overall two first-place awards at the state competition.

“As a senior, it is heartbreaking knowing that this was my last PJAS competition,” said Kerri. “This activity has helped me gain so many different skills.”

Whenever students hear about PJAS, they think that it is just a lot of work that they don’t really want to do along with all of their other school work, but everyone who participates in PJAS agrees that it is worth all of the work.

“It is really fun to be able to go to Penn State to present your experiment. You can out of school for two days and get to spend time with half of the science department (which is actually really fun),” Kerri added.

Congratulations to the three for placing at states. All of your hard work paid off!