Ellie Nomicos attended the Washington State Science Fair again this year and won first place in her category for the third consecutive year. She also won a special award from the Pacific Science Center for her project. There were over 550 participants.

Nomicos is a fifth-grader at West Mercer Elementary, in Mrs. Kirsten Bourke’s class. Nomicos, a swimmer, did a research project on measuring the effect of height on a swimmer’s speed. Nomicos analyzed the times of the swimmers from the London 2012 Olympics to determine how much height affects a swimmer’s speed in each stroke (freestyle, backstroke, butterfly and breaststroke).

As she expected, height made the biggest difference in freestyle and backstroke, and a very slight difference in breaststroke. It surprised her that height did not make a significant difference for butterfly.

The fair was held April 5-6 at Bremerton High School.