Cao Zhen

caozhen0806@126.com

“What’s the relationship between a bird’s claws and catching food?”

That was just one of the questions posed by one of the 37 science projects at the annual Global Natural History Day’s Shenzhen final, held on Sunday at Shenzhen Museum.

Ten out of 37 teams of students from local primary and middle schools were selected to go on to the next stage of the competition. They will represent Shenzhen and compete against 400 teams from around the world at the global final in Chongqing in July.

Hosted by Behring Global Educational Foundation, the event is an international educational program designed to inspire interest in natural sciences. The Shenzhen final was organized by Shenzhen Museum and the participants were challenged to explore the theme “Truth in the Material World.”

Each participating team had two students and a mentor, who was either a parent or a teacher. The students were allotted three months to research on and analyze a topic of their own choosing. At the contest, they set up their own exhibits, gave a presentation to three judges and answered the judges’ questions about the content and development of their research.

The students’ projects ranged from biology to physics, including one titled “Why swamp mahogany trees are harmful to nature.” They not only described a species and a phenomenon, but also analyzed its significance in the natural world.

And everyone had something to keep passers-by busy. Wang Luhan and Hu Jingtian, two Grade 2 students from Shenzhen Experimental School, spent one month observing fireflies with their parents on Dalei Mountain in Central China’s Hubei Province. In addition to their exhibition featuring two mind maps, they also set up a green plant decorated with small lights in a dark room to model the lightning bugs.

The three judges, who are well-respected professionals from Shenzhen Safari Park, Shenzhen Mangrove Nature Reserve and Shenzhen Foreign Languages School, listened to the students’ presentations attentively and gave advice.

“In the program, the students developed problem-solving abilities and were very confident during their presentations. They were also good at using Internet resources. Some selected rarely seen plants as their topic but we hope they could first focus on plants in their neighborhood and go outdoors to observe them, not limiting themselves to just labs,” said a judge at the contest.