Teenagers ask the darnedest questions.

Check out this year's school science fair, where they've asked which brand of bubble gum produces the biggest bubbles, do urban planners build schools near hospitals and what's the taste preference of a honey bee.

These were just a few of the 368 science projects on display yesterday at the annual Hawai'i Science & Engineering Fair.

Students in grades 6 through 12 were judged on their inquiries, and the top two individual high school winners and the top high school team will go on an expense-paid trip to the International Science & Engineering Fair in Atlanta in May.

The winners will be announced today at a ceremony starting at 4:30 p.m., said Chris Trusty, science fair director.

"I'm just amazed by the level of inquiry," said Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona. "In order for children to compete in the 21st century and beyond high school, they'll need their STEM" — science, technology, engineering and math.

"Science isn't only for geeks and nerds. All these kids have different interests, not just science and math," Aiona said.

Experiments ran the gamut of inquiry: soy fuels, the effect of composting on plant growth, E. coli in Pearl Harbor waters, environmental factors contributing to flash floods.

"The big thing is students are able to communicate about their project with adults," said Dan Nelson, a retired teacher judging the science fair. "They have to have confidence to explain their project.

"Science fairs for a lot of kids provide a place to be recognized at their school for a special ability."

Eleven-year-old Nicole Umehira, a sixth-grader at St. Ann School in Kane'ohe, conducted research on which gum made the biggest bubble.

The winner was Hubba Bubba Max, she said.

Using her dad and herself as test subjects, Umehira said she chewed for 10 minutes and recorded her results for two weeks.

"I have never done a science project like this before," Umehira said. "Now I know there are different ways to conduct an experiment. Maybe next year I could do the same one but use sugarless gum and compare it to regular gum."

After weeks of data collection and graphing, Megan Momohara and Ryan Kikuehi, University of Hawai'i Laboratory School students, have learned that there's no correlation between the location of schools and hospitals.

"They didn't plan anything out when they built schools and hospitals," Kikuehi said. "They put schools wherever there's free land."

One of the judges was Terri the robot, created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Pacific Service Center.

Terri moved around the science fair yesterday with Nadia Sbeih, a NOAA outreach coordinator. Sbeih said Terri is quite popular at science fairs. He asked the students questions about their projects and asked them their names.

"He will help us today in finding the NOAA Discoverer of the Year World prize," Sbeih said. "The robot is really fun and you can program him to ask all kinds of questions that engage kids."