An invention designed to prevent deadly house fires and a brownie made with apples took top honours at the Niwa Bay of Plenty Science & Technology Fair.

Tauranga Intermediate School’s science fair programme is paying off with its students scooping first, second and two highly commended prizes in the technology section. It also took the top three placings in the science division. All up, a total of 14 of the 33 prizes available.

Year 7 student, Thomas Li was judged best in technology and won the overall prize at the July event - taking home $700 for the stove safety guard he created.

“In my family, we sometimes burned food and we wouldn’t want the risk of having a house fire, so the idea was to keep people safe,” says Thomas. “I used Raspberry Pi hardware and coded the software so the sensors know if there’s a fire.”

The device senses infrared radiation from flames and can detect whether humans are near before sounding an alarm.

“For new houses, I would build the product into stoves so it’s more convenient and for older houses, a separate device could be sold,” says Thomas. “I was surprised to win. It felt good because this was my first year doing science fair.”

For runner-up Megan Salmons, it was her second year entering the science fair. The keen baker took $550 for coming first in the science division and second overall.

“I’ve recently gone dairy-free but I was missing the taste of normal milk especially in baking. I either can’t eat it (dairy-free brownie) or it’s super expensive so I wanted to come up with a good recipe that I could make at home.”

The Year 8 student spent hours in her kitchen testing the consistency and density of brownies, the weight, how much it rose and used 45 test subjects to judge the taste. Megan’s eureka moment came when she discovered a surprising switch out.

“The best alternative was Olivani, but it tied with apple sauce and I prefer that because it’s healthier,” she says. “It’s sweeter and it doesn’t taste like apple.”

Science teacher, John Marsh was impressed with both ideas and the thoroughness of their research.

“Megan was very focused and when I gave her advice or ideas, she ran with it and the same with Thomas. They both lifted their projects from the school fair to the regional Rotorua event. They put in a lot of work,” he says.