At just 7 years old, Glen Cove’s Jada Parisi was named a finalist in the Institute for Advanced Computational Science Challenge at Stony Brook University for her experiment on dark matter.
Christian Parisi, Jada’s father, said Jada has demonstrated an interest in science for years, and although she had her doubts about the competition at first, decided to take on the challenge.
Jada is a second-grader at Deasy School in Natalie Tenke’s class and was recommended for the competition by the school’s STEM teacher Jessica McKenna, her father said.
The science competition is open to students in kindergarten through 12th grade and its goal is to highlight the work of women in STEM through scientific experiment. The annual competition is held in honor of International Day of Women and Girls in Science in February.
Parisi said contestants were given a list of scientists and example experiments prior to the competition.
“She landed on a Vera Rubin one about dark matter,” he said. “It made sense. It was a good one.”
After Jada picked the topic of her experiment, Parisi said he helped find additional information to explain Rubin’s findings.
“I gave her access to information to help her synthesize that,” he said.
Performing an experiment with tubes of gravel, Jada looked at how the existence of dark matter—or lack thereof—affected gravity. In Jada’s experiment, she used two tubes filled with gravel to represent the existence of dark matter. One of the vials was filled with water and gravel, while the other only had gravel in it.
“Both vials look the same but the gravel inside moves differently,” Jada said in a video presentation of her experiment.
Jada said the gravel moves faster in the vial with dark matter, represented without the liquid. She said the gravel falls more slowly in the vial without dark matter because gravity is weaker.
Although it was an elementary-level experiment, Parisi said he learned something new about the subject throughout the competition process as well.
“I didn’t realize that 70-some-odd percent of the gravity that exists on Earth is explained by something that we have no idea what it is,” said her father.
Parisi said Jada has always been interested in math and science, completing at-home experiments like growing crystals. As someone who works in technology himself, Parisi said that last year the two of them built a math app that they uploaded to the iOS store.
But that’s not all Jada is interested in, he said. While she is drawn to subjects like math and science, she is also interested in fiction writing and art. Some of her drawings were even integrated into her dark matter presentation, Parisi said.
As a finalist, Jada was invited to give a presentation at Stony Brook on Feb. 13, where she received a certificate of accomplishment. Parisi said she spoke in front of about 60 people at the competition.
“It was a good experience for her, and I think having that comfort and confidence in that experience at 7 years old was really good for her,” he said.
