Spotlight on the Eighth Grade, Northeast Region, First Place Team; SonicSoundScientists

Team Name: SonicSoundScientists
Region: Northeast
Grade: 8
School: Saint Dominic Elementary School
City, State: Brick, New Jersey
Team Advisor: Joanne Arnold
Students: Danielle DeFlores, Catherine Goodyear, Shannon McMahon, Christina Vassalo
Mission Challenge: Food, Health and Fitness

Team “SonicSoundScientists” was recognized for its efforts to research the effects that listening to loud music through headphones has on permanent hearing loss. The team developed a pair of headphones designed to reduce noise-induced hearing loss while maintaining sound quality and created a campaign to raise awareness on the issue. The team used materials, including rubber foam, acoustic foam, and VanityFair plates to create headphone prototypes. The team then tested the headphones against existing brands to rate their effectiveness on reducing the decibel levels while still canceling out background noise to keep the sound quality high. The students identified a Sony brand of headphones that works best to reduce decibels while maintaining sound quality and also found that the materials they used on their prototypes worked effectively to reach the same goal. The team plans to use its research to develop a new type of headphones and will present its findings to the school community to raise awareness of this issue.

Each student on SonicSoundScientists has won $3,000.00 in U.S. EE Savings Bonds, a certificate of recognition from the U.S. Army and an expenses-paid trip to the National Judging and Educational Event in Washington D.C. in June to present their final projects and compete for an additional $5,000.00 in U.S. EE Savings Bonds.

To view the full list of the 2010-2011 eCYBERMISSION state and regional winning teams, click here.