He walked away from region not only with a first-place win but also with an award from the Darcey Family Foundation. Cameron also will go on to the national symposium in Orlando.

Sixteen-year-old Griffin, a sophomore, impressed the Intel Corporation with her comparison of music recordings.

“I’m a big fan of music like most teen-agers. I’m in the school band, and over the years I’ve collected a lot of music. I’ve been trying to rip it to my computer, and I wanted to figure out which audio codec (a sound file) would take up less room on my computer and also give me a good sound quality that I could also recognize,” she said.

In her study, Griffin had 92 students listen to Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” in an MP3 format, a wave format, such as in a compact disc, and downloads from iTunes in AAC (Advanced Audio Coding or M4A). The students attempted to identify each format after they were given a description of each format. Also, she had them choose the recording with the best quality.

Fifty-nine percent preferred the wave format. Although students generally could not distinguish the AAC format from the MP3 format, 47 percent were able to correctly identify the wave file, she said.

The wave formatted file is lossless, which means it will take up more memory on a computer.

“Anything that’s recorded there is always going to be there,” she said.

The MP3 file deletes sounds that are out of a human’s range of hearing. AAC format is comparable but is better for older music, such as Jimi Hendrix, Griffin said.

“You get your money’s worth when you pay for it,” she said of CDs. “AAC, which iTunes uses and Apple promotes and they say it’s the best thing out there, really you can’t identify that quality over anything else. And it’s not the best.”

Taking home third place at regional were sophomores Kristy Wright, 15, and Ariel Sasine, 16 and senior Michael Lawson, 17.

Wright, who marches flute for the 50th Regiment, designed a cover for her instrument to remedy a simple but bothersome problem on the field during rainy performances.

Woodwind players know not to allow their instrument to get wet. Key pads can easily ruin and replacement is costly, she said. First, Wright tested other means of protection, but her solution worked best she said. Her design to protect the flute from the elements was a fitted sleeve with a lining of thin cloth and an exterior of fabric similar to a plastic tablecloth.

In Sasine’s project, she compared the taste of tap water versus bottled water. She got the idea, she said, when a friend at lunch drank some water from Sasine’s bottle she just refilled from a tap. Her friend liked the taste, and it got Sasine to thinking if people could really differentiate from tap.

She got three classes to take a blind test tasting three ounces each of bottled distilled, bottled charcoal filtered, bottled spring, and tap water from Moultrie’s municipal supply.

“I pretty much figured out that they can tell that there is a difference, [but] they can’t tell what each one is,” she said.