Amy likes running track, playing volleyball, raising animals through the 4-H Club, and playing trumpet in the school band. Jayne enjoys raising show pigs, competitive horseback riding, and skiing.
Amy would like to be an architectural designer because it "combines my interests in sciences, art, and math." Jayne hopes to be a veterinarian "because I love animals."
Last year, Amy and Jayne found that airborne dust increases the melt rate of snow. This year, they decided to assess how dust from dirt roads common in their community might reach the snow pack in nearby mountains as well as how dust affects the melt rate of snow on which it settles.
Amy and Jayne measured how much dust scatters from dirt roads by designing and installing sampling devices and placing them at intervals successively further from a dirt road. They also collected snow at increasing distances from their sampling sites and tested it for reflectivity, melt rate, and amounts of particulate matter. They found that dust scatters in predictable patterns from heavily used dirt roads. Snow contaminated with dust melts significantly faster than snow without dust.
