Fog harps resonate with judges to take 2022 Innofair honours
By Bryan Yip
Innovation Fair, or Innofair for short, was held online on March 19. First place, also known as the Innovation Award, went to Joyce Liang, Kristen Wong, and Katherine Yan from KGV. Their project was about a relatively new piece of technology called a fog harp, which is designed to collect ambient water from fog. They experimented with different variables on the fog harp, such as material, and number and thickness of strings to create the most optimal fog harp for water collection.
Six awards were given in total, including the scientifically engaged award, awarded to the team with the highest trivia score; the fan favourite award, which was voted by visitors, participants, and judges; the most creative award, given to the two teams that displayed the most creativity; and the top three overall, ranked by their overall score according to the rubric.
Innofair is an annual high school science fair competition in which students are given an opportunity to explore and investigate their interests in a chosen field of STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — through a research project. Each team is also allocated a professor from different Hong Kong universities in their area of choosing as a guiding mentor.
Hosted by a team of students, including Megan Chan, Michelle Wong, Hemashri Mohan, and Charis Pao from Year 12, and Jasper Lau and Heer Jhaveri from Year 11. Innofair is a legacy project running for the second year, founded by RCHK alumni Brenden Mah and Tor Keat.
The teams are Year 10 to 13 students from international schools all over Hong Kong, each given around six months to prepare a presentation on the findings of their research project. The teams were then judged on seven criteria: their research question, methodology and experiment design, data collection and analysis, evaluation and applicability, reflection, personal relevance and creativity, and presentation. The six highest scoring teams, three from each of the two judging blocks, proceeded to the finals.
Innofair was supposed to be held live, but this had to be changed due to the pandemic. Chan, Co-President of Innofair, remarked that “[the event], like last year, was intended to be held live, but the fifth wave of cases came shortly before the scheduled date and we had to scrap that plan.”
Participant Desmond Cheng noted that “it was a little chaotic because it was online, but for what they had, they did a pretty good job — [it] sucks [that] we didn't get to present in person though.”
Despite the online transition, the event still received good feedback from visitors. One visitor remarked that “it was nice to see the different projects that the students have come up with.”
The day kicked off with a welcome speech from Harry Brown, Renaissance College Principal, followed with another speech by Skye Jeynes, the learning technology lead at the ESF centre. As the event continued on, visitors listened to various team presentations, whether that be observing the formal judging sessions or discussions in individual exhibition rooms. After the final rounds, the day ended with a trivia game that included questions inspired by each of the research projects at the fair. The award ceremony then commenced shortly afterwards.
Reflecting on the event, many participants enjoyed the experience. Justin Yuen said that “it was a great learning opportunity,” whilst another participant noted that “the professor gave a lot of useful advice that guided our group through the entire process” and that the event was “overall a great experience.”
Though the pandemic posed obstacles for both organisers and participants, they were overcome and Innofair was held with much success.
“If all goes well,” Chan noted, “we’ll be able to host the event in-person next year as planned. But even if we don’t, I have faith that we can make the fair still as enjoyable for everyone involved!”