When Alva Powell saw that her project on hummingbirds earned her a first-place medal at the R-II Science Fair on Feb. 12 at Montgomery County Middle School, she was all smiles.

It was the first victory for the Montgomery City Elementary second-grade student.

“She’s very excited,” said Anna Powell, Alva’s mother.

Alva was one of 12 students in the district to earn first-place finishes at the annual science fair, which was moved to the MCMS multipurpose room after being housed at Montgomery City Elementary for the last two years. The other winners were Henry Deering (kindergarten), Lillian Hamilton (first grade), Adelaide Healy (third grade), Dawson Doyle (fourth grade), Jett Beattie (fifth grade), Julia Elder (sixth grade), Anna Johnson (seventh grade), Cohen Beattie (eighth grade), Alaina Zerr (ninth grade), Beckham Cothren (11th grade) and Alexa Groeber (12th grade).

The top three finishers in each age division earned medals. They were also prizes given away at the event.

Alva’s project was called “One Feeder, Two Feeder! Red Feeder, Blue Feeder.” Anna Powell said her daughter started on her project over the summer.

“We normally have at least a couple of hundred hummingbirds at our house,” Anna said. “So she decided that since she feeds the hummingbirds every day anyway, she wanted to do an experiment with it. So we started talking about what we can do and what they liked about the food we made or the feeders. She decided she wanted to try to do a blue feeder instead of a red one. It worked out pretty cool. She didn’t think they would land, but they did.”

Anna Johnson won her second first-place medal at the science fair after coming out on top in the seventh-grade division with her project, “Fire In The Hole.” She won first place in the fifth-grade division two years ago.

“There were a lot of fun people who did it,” Anna said. “There were a lot of good projects this year.”

In her project, Anna tested different fire starter bases to find out which one burns the longest.

“I found out that dryer lint burned the longest,” she said. “Its average was 13 and a half minutes.”

Julia finished first in the sixth-grade division for her project, “SPF, Is It Just A Number?” She was testing sunscreen.

“I did a lot of research,” Julia said. “I didn’t know there were different types of sunscreen. It turned out there are physical and mineral types of sunscreen. I learned a whole lot about different protection levels the sunscreen gives up. I took this idea from my FCCLA project.”

Dawson won first place in the fourth-grade division for his project, “Is The Water You Drink Safe?” He tested different kinds of water.

“My conclusion is they’re all safe,” Dawson said. “I did a lot of research and a lot of typing.”