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Wyoming Seminary’s Alvin Tul, grade 9, watched the elaborate little wooden car chug a yard or so before stopping well short of its goal.
“I don’t know what went wrong,” he conceded, noting he was a last-minute substitute running a vehicle designed by a schoolmate for this week’s Science Olympiad Battery Buggy event at Penn State Wilkes-Barre. “You just do the best you can.”
Even as he spoke, Wyoming Area students Cara Yorina and Gabbie Delicati watched with obvious joy as their rubber band-powered airplane made lazy circles nearby, stubbornly defying gravity until the band wound out and it fell slow-motion to the floor. Gabbie wound the rubber band while Cara held the craft for the second of two allowed attempts at earning the longest hang time.
“I’ve been doing this since 7th grade,” Cara, a junior, smiled. “And she’s been doing it since eighth” she noted of sophomore Gabbie.
So, a lot of pressure this year?
“Yeah,” Cara laughed.
Across the hall in one of the racquetball courts, Hannah Fox and Kendra Santuk from Wilkes-Barre Academy just learned their “roller coaster” entry — built so a ball would roll nearly a minute on a gradual downward slope of long stretches of railing joined by tight turns of copper wire — had to be shortened to a 10-second run. They hastily pulled half the track out completely, bypassing most of the rest with a short piece of clear plastic tubing.
Alas, when they dropped the little ball, it rushed out of the plastic tube and over the remaining rail, clanging to the floor.
“We would have done better if the time was longer,” they agree, and judge Steve Lott says under the rules, that’s actually possible. Competitors are asked to build a roller coaster of specific maximum dimensions (length, width, height) that can be adapted to keep the ball rolling anywhere from 10 to 60 seconds, but don’t know the actual time until the event. They get almost eight minutes to adjust the design. Lott said it is possible to lose more points by failing to complete the course at all than by completing it but going over the time limit.
‘Sodium funny’
In the next door racquetball court, seventh-grade students Seth Berry and Evan Kaiser were weighing an impressive-looking construct for the “boomilever,” an event in which competitors must hang their design on a single hook and have the far end hold up 3,000 or more grams of sand before breaking.
The design by the Lake-Lehman pair is eye-catching, even for the judges. The construct boasts multiple triangular bracing (“the strongest shape,” Seth notes) complemented by curves of short strips from flat reed — the type of wood used in woven chairs, designed here to add some resilience to the straight pieces of wood. It all hangs off a single point where two pieces of wood — sides of one of many triangles — meet with glue to hang from the hook.
Seth predicts it can hold up to 7,500 grams of sand. Sadly, it snaps under 2,000 grams, right at that hanging point where the glue came, um, unglued.
“We had an argument about that point,” Seth chuckles. “I told him it was too weak.” Well, next time Evan will listen.
The regional event draws students from numerous schools in multiple events, all aiming to win here and get to a state contest. The team T-shirts can be as inventive as the students themselves. One sported two square characters laughing.
“That was sodium funny!” Na says. “I slapped my neon that one!” Ne replies.
And what of Gabbie and Cara?
“Your best time was 1 minute 44.82 seconds,” the judge advised to their delight. Then, acknowledging how difficult it can be to beat a number like that, he added: “I’m going to have to tell my students to work a lot harder.”
Oh, and it turned out to be the winning time, again. On to states.
