As most of you are aware, RAS shows their support for future scientists by awarding money at the Metro Richmond Science Fair. We call it the Wilber T. Stone Award and look for exhibits that demonstrate astronomy or space science. The Fair encompasses all of the Richmond and surrounding county schools, so it’s quite large–usually on the order of 2-300 entries.
We’ve been doing this for about 15 years now, and we almost always have at least one recipient. And we had a good one this year–Sydney Mabry, of Moody Middle School, composed her project on sunspots by observing them with a telescope that she constructed herself. She was able to determine that the size of a sunspot is directly related to how long the sunspot exists.
