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HOUGHTON - Approximately 300 students filled Michigan Technological University's Memorial Union Building Monday night, but they were not in college.

Students from grades fourth through eighth from 15 elementary and middle schools in Houghton, Baraga and Gogebic counties took over the building for the 11th annual Western Upper Peninsula Science Fair. The fair requires more work than the average school science fair and because of that, typically draws top quality projects, said Shawn Oppliger, director of the the Western Upper Peninsula Center for Science, Mathematics and Environmental Education.

"There is a lot of local science fairs so they show their project at their school and then the best projects come here," she said.

Oppliger's organization co-sponsored the event with the Michigan Tech chapter of Omega Chi Epsilon Chemical Engineering Honor Society.

The projects, done by individuals and pairs, were set up in the ballroom and viewed by the public before participants were interviewed by judges. While children waited for their interview time, they went downstairs to a science festival, where there were numerous hands-on projects set up by Tech and Finlandia student organizations.

A station at which food and flowers were frozen with liquid nitrogen had a large crowd around it.

"Nitrogen is about 80 percent of the air we breathe," Tech student Nick White told the students. "So this is basically liquid air."

Using tongs to dip the items, White doled out mini marshmallows and frozen bits of Oreos to the youth.

"Let it sit for a bit and then take little bites of it," he instructed while passing off a frozen Oreo. "Do not put the whole thing in your mouth."

Mini marshmallows were OK to eat right away, however. Houghton fifth grader Anna Humes was surprised to see a white vapor come out of her mouth when she bit one.

"It was weird because it wasn't all soft," she said afterward.

A make-your-own slime station was also popular. However, students could not bring the slime out of the room for fear that it might get on the building's carpeting. Science project pair Claire Helminen and Rosemary Torola of Calumet-Laurium- Keweenaw's fifth grade enjoyed making colorful slime out of glue, borax, food coloring and water. They said their project focused on a favorite snack.

"Our question was, do different kinds of popcorn leave different amounts of kernels unpopped?" Torola said.

After testing three different types of popcorn, the answer, they found, was yes. They hypothesized that different amounts of butter affect the popping time.

Other projects at the fair found that lemons are more sour than limes, ice cubes melt faster in salt water than in tap water and that bread molds faster at room temperature than a colder temperature.

In the ballroom, Houghton sixth-grade students Sophia Witting and Emma Schultz were putting last-minute polka dots on their project's board.

"It's about gum, what brand of bubble gum blows the biggest bubble," Witting said of their experiment.

They found Bubblicious won over Trident, Dubble Bubble, Bubble Yum and Extra.

Ribbon awards were given to the top six projects in each grade for pairs and individuals.

Layla Aslani can be reached at laslani @mininggazette.com.