If you hear a howl in the woods, Luc Johnstone can probably tell you what made the sound.

Martin Nishikawa, on the other hand, can explain how the sound traveled all the way to your brain.

And Tassha Johnson will want to check out the surrounding land for signs that the howl came from something out of this world.

Luc, Martin, and Tassha were all participants in the 2002 Yukon/Stikine Science Fair, held recently at Yukon College in Whitehorse.

For Luc, it was a new experience. He's in Grade 5 at Teslin School, attending public school for the first time after several years of home-schooling.

His first-ever science fair project was a display on Yukon carnivores, including wolf, grizzly, wolverine, and lynx, and featuring an assortment of skulls, teeth, and pelts.

"Me and my dad trap them on my dad's trapline," Luc explained. He and his father also cleaned the skulls and treated the pelts themselves. The display included a meticulous set of measurements of each carnivore's skull and teeth. In the process of developing the display, Luc learned about the animals' habits, what they eat, and their life patterns.

The most fascinating Yukon carnivore, Luc said, is the wolverine, which can take down animals five times its size. They are not often seen, but Luc has spotted wolverines a couple of times on the trapline.

You'll hear a couple of sticks crack, and see a little movement, he said. Then you might see a head peering at you. And then it's gone.

"They just blend right into the bush."

Martin Nishikawa's project began in a book rather than in the bush. The Grade 4 student from Selkirk School in Whitehorse found a design for a sound scope. With a broken bit of mirror on a stretched balloon, a flashlight, a box, and some other odds and ends, he built a device to show sound as a vibrating patch of light.

Then he recorded notes played on a violin, a cello, and a piano, and experimented to see which caused the light patch to vibrate.

The cello notes worked best, and low E on the piano always set the light patch dancing, Martin said. But the violin notes didn't make it move at all.

"Zip, zap, zoop, none!"

What he learned from his sound scope is that sound is a form of energy that can be passed on to other things, whether it's a bit of mirror attached to stretched balloon or the stretched tissue of an eardrum.

Martin's display, which won first prize in his division, showed how sound energy makes your eardrum vibrate, just like the patch of light, and the vibration moves through the bones of the ear to nerves that "tingle your brain" and let you hear.

Tassha Johnson's project relied on both books and the Internet. The Grade 5 student from Hidden Valley School is fascinated by crop circles, or agriglyphs - and she's not the only one. Her display won the Students' Choice award at the Regional Science Fair, as well as an Honourable Mention from the judges.

Crop circles caught her attention because she's interested in mathematics, and the intricate geometric shapes, which have appeared mysteriously in fields around the world, appeal to her. She thinks they might be some kind of communication from another planet.

Nine thousand crop circles have been reported, showing up in every country except China and South Africa, Tassha said. From books and the Internet, she compiled a collection of photographs and drawings of the mysterious patterns.

"Some of these crop circles are so amazing that it looks like no one else could do the exact same thing," she said.

Despite all her research, Tassha's not sure what crop circles are or what they mean, but she hasn't given up the idea that they might be some kind of geometrical communication from somewhere off this planet. And she'd like to look into the subject further.

Luc Johnstone undertook his project for two reasons: to learn about carnivores and to learn about science fairs. He learned quite a bit about both, he said.

Most importantly, he learned how much time and work go into a good science fair project. The 90 students whose projects were on display at Yukon College doubtless agree.

For results from the 2002 Yukon/Stikine Regional Science Fair, go to the Yukon Science Institute website at www.taiga.net/ysi. For information about science fairs in the Yukon, contact Innovators in the Schools at (867) 668-8739.