COEUR d'ALENE — Enlarged gummy bears, live baby chicks, elephant toothpaste, vinegar volcanoes, homemade X-ray machines, solutions for air pollution, how to manage bacteria in the cafeteria.

If it can be imagined, asked and explored, the students at Ramsey Magnet School of Science worked to uncover the answers during this year's science fair.

“I like to see through stuff," fourth grader Israel Amersfoort said Thursday morning as he showcased his project using a mock X-ray machine he built with his mom, who works as an MRI technician.

“This is the X-ray we took of my hands, and we put it in here and there’s a flashlight right here and we can see what it looks like through them,” Israel said as the light shined through the image. “You can see though the bones.”

He was curious what household items look like on the inside, such as toy dinosaurs, keys, a stapler and a cellphone. With the help of his mom's work, he was able to X-ray these items and print the radiographs to examine the variations in shading.

"It’s also fun while learning black is air, lighter black is fat, grayish is soft tissue, white is metal," Israel said.

His project posed the question, "What is an X-ray?"

“What absorbs it is the beam of the invisible radiation that passes through the body,” he said. 

He said he learned something pretty cool through his research.

“You can take X-rays in space,” he said. “There’s no air, so it will be all white.”

This unique display of scientific curiosity was among more than 280 projects students submitted to the annual science fair. All third, fourth and fifth graders entered projects into the fair while kindergarten, first and second grade students had the option to participate.

Mandi Ferguson, fourth and fifth grade teacher and science fair coordinator, said this year's fair had everything under the sun.

“The sky is the limit for the kids," she said.

She said this event helps kids realize that even though they may be young, they can explore and learn from the scientific process.

“Part of this is wanting to inspire them to look at the natural world differently, ask questions and for them to see themselves as young scientists,” she said, “and that adults in the community really rally behind them and support that work that they’ve done.” 

Judges ranged from Coeur d'Alene School District administrators and board members to parents, engineers and former Ramsey students who are now high school seniors.

"It's really cool they allow all the grades to participate if they want to, I think it's cool the kindergartners can try if they want to," Lake City High senior and former Ramsey student Charlee Bridges said. "The kids are really creative in a lot of their posters, they made them really colorful and really cool to look at."

Third grader Kaden Mills-Drader had quite the setup as he used a rotary vane vacuum pump to test his hypothesis regarding how water in a jar reacts when under vacuum pressure.

“I didn’t know if it would float,” he said. “Gravity in space is 0%."

Although it didn't do quite what he expected, he enjoyed the project.

“The way the water collapsed was really cool,” he said.

Ramsey mom Andi West was one of the judges. 

“All the projects are really impressive, the kids did a great job,” she said. “It’s really fun for them to get to pick something they’re interested in and then run it through an experiment. Both my girls really enjoyed doing that.” 

She referred to one experiment she came across.

“There’s a really cool project on Wi-Fi that I actually learned from, about Wi-Fi coverage in your house,” West said. “They’re even teaching adults things.”

    Ramsey Magnet School fourth grader Israel Amersfoort gestures Thursday to the different objects he had X-rayed for his science fair project, which explored what X-rays are and how to read a radiograph.
  

    Ramsey mom and science fair judge Andi West wanders among more than 280 projects Thursday morning in the school's gym.
  

    One Ramsey student welded a miniature windmill as part of a science fair project on air pollution.