by Mari Radtke
JSSTFI Junior State Science & Technology Fair of Iowa was held Monday, November 10 at Northwestern College in Orange City.
Several schools around northwest Iowa brought TAG students with experiments, projects and the all important project board. The board names the project and highlights important aspects of the project and often includes pictures at important stages of the project. Measures, changes and other important facts are recorded and shown here.
The process of the project is outlined and displayed. A science fair project uses multiple disciplines to complete.
Ethan Thorne of rural Paullina participated in the 2025 JSSTFI. He started his first year as a home-schooled student. They have fun calling it what Grampa named it “Engelke Academy!”
This is Ethan’s first science fair, and he loves Legos. He has also always been fascinated by arcade claw machines. That what gave him the idea to build a claw machine out of Legos. First, he built a pinball machine. His first effort was small and broke a lot. He took that one apart and made a new, bigger one. That also broke. Then he ordered the motors and a few select pieces online for his claw machine. Ethan faced the same problem. He did not buy a kit, but his claw machine still broke a lot. So, Ethan made bigger columns to support his the upper parts of his claw machine. His machine won the fair and he was awarded a Mega Science Kit for his effort.

Ethan thinks of himself as his own teacher, but really Mom, Whitney, does all the teaching, guiding and planning and arranging. She found the SSTFI and entered Ethan and his claw machine! At first, he was not excited about it. He had taken his claw machine to school last year, but kids looked and touched, and it broke.
While there, Ethan checked out other projects. The participants were broken into 3 groups with 1 group being judged at a time while the other two groups could enjoy STEM projects in other parts of the library. Spintronics, Gravitrax and SnapCircuits were activities the young scientists in training could experiment with. While not in judging, Ethan solved a rubric cube for another participant.
He said there were different kinds of booths. There were booths about geodes and bacteria and other kinds of science and technology. His claw machine took a a lot of trial and error. That’s just science but Ethan thinks he will enter another science fair. Ethan invites you all to visit his YouTube Channel at Ethan-womp.