LEWISTON — A research project exploring the relationship between your signature and your personality won first place in this year’s Lewiston High School Science Fair, held May 10.

The five LHS sophomores whose projects were judged the best were honored during the high school’s annual Night of Excellence on May 29.

Bates College, a sponsor of the fair, welcomed the winners for an afternoon visit to campus that included an opportunity to perform an experiment in a college lab.

The projects were assessed by judges from Bates, Central Maine Community College and the high school. Taylor Roy’s signature experiment won first place in the fair, in which some 200 sophomores explored a wide variety of research interests.

In second place was Mikaela St. Laurent, who wondered whether the distance between individual dominoes in line would affect the acceleration at which the entire line falls.

Jared Dumas won third place for investigating how the placement of the vertical stabilizer on a model airplane can affect the aircraft’s flight.

Two students, Emily Cloutier and Brooke Leger, tied for fourth place this year. Cloutier’s project, “Fingerprinting Similarities,” sought to find out if blood-related people have more similarities in their fingerprints than people who are not related.

Leger’s project, “Bowling Density Experiment,” determined the temperature of water in which a bowling ball will sink due to density differences.

This year, for the first time, participating students presented their projects electronically, rather than on display boards. The first round of judging took place in classrooms, as students presented their projects to judges and other students.

“We had many positive comments from the Bates volunteers, and feel that the PowerPoint presentations in small groups are the way to go,” said Laurie Haines, the Lewiston High science teacher who oversees the fair. “This type of presentation format is becoming the norm in colleges, and is great experience for our sophomores.”

The winning students spent several hours as guests at Bates, hosted by the two Bates students who helped organize the fair for three years, seniors (and now graduates) Andrew Kageleiry of Dover, N.H., and Colby Maldini of New Castle, N.H. The winners performed an experiment in a chemistry lab and took a tour of the campus and the art museum. To cap their visit, they ate lunch in Commons.

“Andrew and Colby were great to work with,” Haines said of Kageleiry and Maldini. “These two guys were professional and took the job of science fair coordinators seriously. They will be missed.”