New Haven Independent

Alana Bigard was among the Pre-K students in Holly O’Brien’s class at Davis Street School who made that discovery.

Alana demonstrated the discovery Wednesday inside Yale’s Commons, where rows of uncommon discoveries were on display. It was day one of the Citywide Science Fair. The fair continues Thursday; two hundred forty projects are on display.

Actually, Alana and her classmates weren’t able to pick up a flake of Total cereal with a magnet. Not at first. Then they crushed the flake. And the magnet indeed picked it up. Why? Because there’s real iron in that cereal.

Nijuauh Boston also made a disovery with a magnet. She and the others in Kathy Barkin’s Pre-K class at Vincent Mauro School put different sizes of wooden blocks inside two magnets to see which would stick. One didn’t stick. “Because it’s fat,” Nijuauh reported. The skinner one worked.

Monique Gibbs, Justin Jones, Niko Avila, and Chad Feoloa tested different light bulbs to see which used the least electricity. They discovered that “the twisted one” fared best — a compact fluorescent.

Meanwhile, Heather Treciokos’s third-graders made a discovery that could affect the world — or the block — around them at John C. Daniels Schools.

They used a radar gun to check the speeds of cars zipping by on Congress Avenue. They found that 58 out of 110 cars went over the posted 30 mile-per-hour speed limit, and that the rate was basically the same during and after school. City government’s transportation czar, Mike Piscitelli, plans to come talk about the results with the class next week. The class plans to ask him to put up a “school zone” sign as well as a crosswalk to help them get to class safely.