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‘‘I thought of Hurricane Katrina ... the flooding houses and families hurt because they lost loved ones,” she said.

She discovered through her work that gravel actually works best.

Agwe is one of 115 students in The Barrie School’s middle school that worked over the past three months on a science experiment for last week’s Science Day in which all students presented their findings.

The Barrie School, a private, independent-learning school, has been holding a Science Day for years. The day is part of an extended learning program for all grades and subjects. For instance, a History Day may include a trip to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

‘‘It’s an experiential program,” said Linda Cole, head of the middle school at Barrie. ‘‘[We want students to] learn outside the classroom and experience what is taught in the classroom.”

But on Science Day, the students not only get to present their hard work, but they also learn from others and participate in hands-on activities. This year’s highlight included a demonstration from 2nd Lt. Guilford Queen of Maryland’s Civil Air Patrol, who let students launch rockets and learn about aerospace science. He said the demonstration was important to give students another experience in a science they typically do not learn about in middle school.

‘‘[The students] were incredibly attentive,” he said. ‘‘I thought that Science Day was extremely well done. It’s a small school and for a small school effort, they got all the kids to contribute.”

While students enjoyed watching a rocket fly into the air before exploding into pieces, others were inside showing off their hard work.

Erica Peterson, 13, said she wanted to choose a topic for her science project that is not typically discussed in the classroom.

She decided to test which color eyes and which digital camera setting produced the most and least red-eye photographs.

Peterson took photos of people with hazel, brown, blue or green eyes and learned that people with lighter eyes tend to have less melanin, a pigment produced by the body for hair, skin and eye color. The more melanin the subject of a photo has, the less likely the photo will show red-eye.

While Peterson took the approach of finding out more about everyday life, seventh-graders Grant Ponton and Dylan Nunn, both 13, decided to study the genetics of mice. They wanted to learn which genes were dominant by allowing white mice and black mice to mate and observing their offspring.

How did the 13-year-olds even think of this? Well, it didn’t hurt that Ponton’s mom is a veterinarian.

‘‘[My mom] kind of gave us the idea,” Ponton said. ‘‘Plus, live animals are so much fun.”

The mice were a hit with the rest of the middle school, too. In fact, many students signed up to adopt the mice after the experiment.

Ponton and Nunn’s project didn’t turn out exactly as planned. Many of the mice died and one of the pregnant female mice was still pregnant when the project was supposed to come to a close.

In fact, it was the white female mouse that had mated with a black male mouse that would prove their hypothesis that black was indeed the dominant trait. So they had to do an emergency Caesarean-birth, with the help of some professionals, of course.

While the baby mice were not fully developed, all the young scientists had to do was look at the eyes for the color. If the eyes were pink, then the mice would develop into white mice. If the eyes were black, then they would be black mice. The mice did have black eyes and Ponton and Nunn could safely conclude that black was dominant.

Tim Shelton, a science teacher for the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade classes at Barrie, said Ponton and Nunn’s project was impressive, but hoped every student learned from their projects.

‘‘The real reason I teach science is I want to see more scientists in the world, whether they use science for science or to help the world in their own way,” Shelton said.