Calgary’s scientists of the future are breaking out the beakers, tongs, flasks and safety goggles in preparation for the biggest regional science fair in the Country.

Students were setting up their experiments at the Olympic Oval on Wednesday for the 2015 Calgary Youth Science Fair.

The goal of the fair is to promote an appreciation for science and more than 900 Calgary-area students from grades five to twelve will compete at this year’s event for a variety of prizes.

The students’ work will be graded by more than 400 volunteer judges when the competition gets underway on Friday.

“This is amazing to see a ten year old or eleven year old here who’s so excited about getting a battery to work from a lemon and to get their clock ticking by just connecting it to a lemon or to see a kid in grade twelve seeing potentials of curing cancer with the work that they’ve done, it’s quite impressive,” said Susan Michaud, Chair of Media and Communications Calgary Youth Science Fair.

The first round of judging starts at 8:00 a.m. Friday and the second round begins at 1:00 p.m.

The public can view the experiments and projects on Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to noon and the winners will be announced at an award ceremony at 1:00 p.m.

“Kids will be at their projects so they’re gung-ho and ready to talk about what they’ve learned and what they’ve researched. And we’ll also have a number of setups from different faculties at the university in a science lab as well for them to check out,” said Michaud.

Grade ten student Astha Burande designed and built a prototype for a smart speed bump that produces electricity every time a car goes over it.

“The Beacon Hill area has loads of speed bumps and if you connect all these speed bumps and have like a common inverter or something installed and use it all to light the lights and the traffic lights there, I’m pretty sure it would light up the entire area,” said Astha. “It would be like a rotating cylinder, like a roller kind of thing, so it would rotate as the car goes up and down.”

Bennett Gibson-Dunne is in grade nine and invented a new way to use fluid to save buildings during earthquakes.

“I developed an earthquake resistant building,” said Bennett. “It has four main flexible pillars that are filled with this smart fluid, called MR fluid, it has the ability to pretty much solidify when it’s exposed to a magnetic field and then change back when the magnetic field is taken away.”

A number if the winners will go on to represent the city at the Canada Wide Science Fair in Fredericton, New Brunswick later this year.

For more information, click HERE.

(With files from Kevin Green)