2004 ISEF NEWSLETTER VOLUME #3

Portland. Oregon

> Anna's ISEF adventures

Hello Science Fair Friends and Sponsors:

The excitement of fair week continues to grow. Today
(Monday) we all had breakfast in the Muller's room.
Thanks to Mr.Ron Miller we had cream cheese for our bagels.

We followed the Lewis and Clark trail to the mouth of the Columbia River. We decided to up-date Mr. Muller's music selections repertoire with selections from Weezer, Green Day, The Offspring, and The Used. He said one CD sounded a little like Janice Joplin, (Who ever that is).

We stopped for lunch at the Canary in Astoria and then off to the Columbia Maritime Museum and learned about the ships going out exiting the Columbia River over the bar and into the Pacific Ocean. Sometime the waves are as high as 40 feet. A movie depicted how the Coast Guard trains for emergency rescue at the bar of the Columbia River. This is one of the most dangerous environments for search and rescue in the world.

We had a quick stop at Cannon Beach home of the famous Haystack rock. Most of us touched the Pacific Ocean and were very impressed.

Stocked up on more pins we headed for the opening ceremony. It was co-hosted by a local meteorologist Matt Zaffino, and CEO of INTEL Dr. Craig Barrett.
Students were introduced to the 10 distinguished Nobel Laureates, and the INTEL fellows.

Dr Rodney Brooks of MIT gave a presentation on robots.
He demonstrated how one of his students created a robot that moved like an insect, and another student created a robot with life like expressions. In the future we can expect robots to become integrated into our daily lives. To quote Sophie " it was awesome, and blew me away".

When we saw a clip on the jumbo-tron of Lisa Glukhovsky winning last years ISEF, it brought back wonderful memories. How proud we all felt. Anna our number one pin trading hack with her western hat was easy to spot at the program.

Tomorrow we will do a final check of the projects and in the afternoon the judges start preliminary judging of the projects without us. At this point we have done all we can do, so a day to the mall is on the calendar.