 Bemidji Middle School was packed tonight as more than 500 students showed off experiments for the school's annual science fair. Lakeland News reporter Cheryl Moore has a look at some of this year's projects. For the 33rd year in a row, Bemidji Middle Schoolers were encouraged to put on their thinking caps, write a hypothesis, and conduct an experiment all in the name of science. There's a variety of categories that students can enter their projects in ranging from behavioral and social sciences to chemistry to physics to just a whole variety of botany. This year's science fair had more than 550 projects. Some of the kids started working on their projects all the way back in November. I tested different colored shingles and one piece of tin to find out which one would stay cooler and which one would stay warmer in temperature. And I found out the letter colored shingles stayed cooler because they reflect more heat back at the sun and the darker ones absorb more, making it warmer around so that could kind of help with global warming of it too. My title is Grow Baby Grow and what I did was put caffeine in different forms in each of the grasses that I grew. This year's overall winner was Madeline Larson. There's a lot a kid that can take out of a science fair. I think it's really cool because I get to show off what I did to everyone and I'm proud of it and I get asked a lot of questions about it. I think they get the idea of having to methodically take a look at a particular idea or problem and working through and doing some research on it to understand the background of whatever it is that they're doing. The skills kids learn today are invaluable as well. Reporting in Bemidji, Shremor, Lakeland News. Forty kids from this science fair will next go on to participate in the regional science fair. That event will be held at Bemidji State University on February 22nd. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.