Van Nuys Team Takes Science Bowl Top Honors : Academics: Five students from magnet school defeat 300 competitors to earn a trip to Alaska.

Drawing on obscure facts and formulas they had culled from academic journals and university textbooks, a group of students from Van Nuys High School Science and Math Magnet won first place in the National Science Bowl competition Monday, defeating more than 300 students from 37 states.

The team of five knew that the average depth of the ocean, in meters, is 4,000.

They knew that the WAIS program performs automated searches of databases on the Internet.

They knew that in an Atwood’s machine, with a pulley of negligible mass, the acceleration is g/2 when one hanging mass is three times the other.

They knew all that--and more.

“I knew we had a shot at it,” said team captain Scott Schneider, 16, a junior who anchored the team with his knowledge of physics and chemistry. “It feels great.”

Before facing Pittsburgh’s Taylor Allderdice High School in the finals, the Van Nuys team members huddled on stage, joined hands and let out a pregame shout.

Designed to psych out their opponents, the unscientific tactic apparently worked. Van Nuys won the final game handily, 104 to 58, never falling behind.

“I don’t know what to say,” said a disappointed Eli Lebow, a Harvard-bound high school junior who was captain of the Pittsburgh team. “They knew a lot of the answers and they buzzed fast.”

For winning the top prize, the Van Nuys students will be heading to Alaska in July for an all-expenses-paid trip. But it will be no pleasure cruise. The team will live and work alongside scientists in Prudhoe Bay, above the Arctic Circle, and observe firsthand the oil exploration efforts there.

Before reaching the finals, held in the Washington Convention Center before a crowd of several hundred onlookers, the Van Nuys team rolled over teams from New Mexico, Washington, D.C., Nebraska, Hawaii and Colorado.

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Their pregame theatrics aside, these victors were as focused as can be, even celebrating their big win with restraint.

“It hasn’t hit me yet,” said a subdued Michael Chu, 17, a senior who is headed to UC Berkeley in the fall. “One day, a few weeks from now, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and go, ‘Whoa, we won the nationals.’ ”

Whoa is right. The questions that were fired their way left even seasoned scientists scratching their heads.

How much does the internal energy of a certain mass of gas change when its pressure is doubled and the temperature is kept constant? Which one of the world’s major food crops is so poisonous that it is grated to a pulp, soaked, fermented, squeezed and roasted before it is eaten? What percent of the human genome is composed of genes?

(Answers: Does not change, cassava and 2%)

“I’m a mechanical engineer so I’ve been in science for a long time,” said d’Lyn Nelson, who works for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which sponsored the Van Nuys team. “They’re using terms I’ve never heard of.”

Said Mae Jemison, a former space shuttle astronaut who was the moderator during the final round, “I’m glad nobody asked me these questions.”

The National Science Bowl, in its fifth year, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and designed to inspire young students to pursue careers in math and science. The competition begins with regional contests, which this year drew more than 8,000 participants from 1,600 high schools.

Fifty-five teams, each consisting of four members and an alternate, were selected to come to Washington to compete.

On the flight here, the team from Van Nuys did not waste a minute. They pored over science journals provided by their adviser, physics teacher Arthur Altshiller, and quizzed each other to keep their minds sharp.

Besides Scott and Michael, the team included Michael Mazur, 17; Jonathan Kirzner, 17, and Do Joon Ra, 18.

“I knew, with some good luck, that they had the potential to be the best,” Altshiller said. “If anyone is better, I would like to see them.”

Does anyone really need to know that bamboo takes longer than banana, agave or walnut plants to produce a seed? Or that a change in the value of a state function of a system is independent of the path used to carry out the process?

Altshiller says it’s caring what the answers are that sets great minds apart.

“They want to know all the answers,” he said of the winning team. “The details and the trivia--that’s secondary to wondering what the answer is.”

Back in Van Nuys, news of the team’s win Monday spread quickly around the 3,000-student campus, where administrators, teachers and students cheered and applauded as written memoranda were read in classrooms and during breaks.

Principal Robert Gayle Scharf was the first to be notified in a triumphant call from the team’s coach from his Washington hotel room.

Almost immediately, Scharf began arranging for the school band and pep team--and everyone else he could rally--to greet the victorious scholars upon their scheduled return late Monday night to Los Angeles International Airport.

“We plan to provide a pretty enthusiastic reception,” Scharf said, as staff members scrambled to arrange bus transportation to the airport. “We have won a lot of honors, but a national championship is even more special.”

An official celebration honoring the winners is scheduled for noon Thursday in the campus quad at 6535 Cedros Ave.

Scharf said almost 600 students participate in the math/science magnet on the campus, which began 12 years ago. He described students who come from all over the Los Angeles Unified School District to participate as “extremely successful, highly competitive and wonderful.”

Individual science bowl members and others in the magnet program have won a number of academic events, including the 1993 championship in the National Computer Science Competition.

Also contributing to this story was Times staff writer Martha L. Willman in Los Angeles.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

A Test Sampling Following are sample questions from the final round of the national Science Bowl competition.

At 4,500 kilometers below the surface of the Earth, the pressure in atmospheres is estimated to be:

A. 1,000

B. 500,000

C. 1,000,000

D. 3,000,000

ANSWER: D

For long distances of 10 miles or more, what animal holds the land speed record?

A. Cheetah

B. Gazelle

C. Pronghorn American antelope

D. Emu

ANSWER: C

Which of the following programs performs an automated search of databases and library catalogues on the Internet?

A. IRC

B. WAIS

C. Gopher

D. Telnet

ANSWER: B

A heat engine produces 10,000 joules of heat while performing 2,500 joules of useful work. What is the efficiency of this engine?

A. 75%

B. 25%

C. 20%

D. 10%

ANSWER: C

A wheel four meters in diameter rotates on a fixed frictionless horizontal axis, about which its moment of inertia is 10 kg-meters squared. A constant tension of 40 newtons is maintained on a rope wrapped around the rim of the wheel. If the wheel starts from rest, find the length of rope unwound after three seconds.

A. 18 meters

B. 36 meters

C. 72 meters

D. 144 meters

ANSWER: C

White metals are known to have low melting points and to be chemically resistant to corrosion. Which of the following is not a white metal?

A. Zinc

B. Antimony

C. Cobalt

D. Lead

ANSWER: C

Source: U.S. Department of Energy