If springtime storms knock out power at the home of 11-year-old Logan Weimer, he won't have to worry about being late for school - providing that he plugs his alarm clock into a sliced lemon.

During the Holloway Elementary School science fair last week, kids crowded around Logan's exhibit as he explained how he used veggie power to keep track of time.

"I tried to get an alarm clock to come on with no batteries," Logan explained, pointing to copper wires and chunks of potato and lemons. Citric acid in the lemon kept the clock working for hours, but the potato "spuddered" out rather quickly.

However, he said he was really happy with his experiment because "if the power goes out, I will get to school on time."

Other fifth-grade students conducted experiments on chewing gum, soda pop, dirty toilet handles, ice cream salt, volcanoes, diapers, cleanser products, plants, and molding bread.

Milk, vanilla, eggs, and sugar blended into a science fair project for 10-year-old Kurt Metz who proved his hypothesis: Ice cream won't freeze unless salt is added to the ice.

Using a chopstick as a pointer, Kurt showed photographs of the kitchen experiment that "tasted really good," he said. "My sister's birthday was a week later, and we made some more."

He said he gets to "smash the ice" when his family makes ice cream at his grandparents' home. "It's fun and good at the same time," he said.

Nearly 70 fifth-grade students put together science fair projects after researching books, Web sites, and other reference materials, said Mark Swavel, a science teacher at Holloway Elementary in the Springfield Schools district.

Paige LaPoint's project, called Pooch Smooch, tested her hypothesis that mouths of dogs are cleaner than mouths of humans. However, using saliva from Dusty (her aunt's pooch), the student showed that the dog had more bacteria. "I feel so excited that a human's mouth is cleaner than a dog's," she said.

Other students tested theories on what brand of gum makes the biggest bubbles and which brand has the longest lasting flavor. Mountain Dew, not Pepsi, had the most sugar in soda pop tested in another student's experiment.

Jena Fleischmann's science fair project dusted up some notions about boys, girls, and dirt.

"I always wondered if boys were dirtier than girls," Jena explained when asked about her topic selection. "My mom always said that boys were dirtier, and I wanted to find out."

Some 50 percent of Americans don't wash their hands before they leave the rest room, according to information posted on Paige's display board.

During her experiment, Paige tested swabs of samplings taken from toilet and sink handles in the boys' and girls' rest rooms. She was surprised when samples from the second-grade girls' rest room were the dirtiest of all. This, she said, possibly could stem from the location - that rest room is closest to the computer lab and cafeteria, and it could get dirtier because more kids use it, she said.

Whatever the reason, she said, the experiment showed that "girls are dirtier than boys."

Fourth-grade student Bradley Stanley, who was visiting the science fair with other classmates, offered an alternative reason for the finding. "Girls get dirtier because they have to clean the house," he said, "because their husbands refuse to do it."

Contact Janet Romaker at:

jromaker@theblade.com or

419-724-6006.

First Published March 21, 2007, 5:43 p.m.