Young Einsteins
Jim Mathews, a senior at Troy High School in Fullerton, isn’t the kind of student who starts trouble. Yet for the sake of science, the engineering whiz recently created unintended pandemonium on campus.
Co-captain of the Fullerton magnet school’s state champion science team, he was practicing the bungee egg drop, an event at a rigorous national science competition where Troy will compete later this week. The aim of the exercise is to let an egg attached to an elastic cord drop as far as possible without hitting the floor hard and cracking. Troy’s team uses a Slinky for the task.
Jim was practicing the drop from the roof of the lecture hall when nearby students panicked. Never mind that he was standing on a wide ledge only 12 feet from the ground, grasping a Slinky with an egg at the end. They were certain Jim was planning a leap to his death.
“Don’t jump, Jim. Don’t jump,” they implored.
Soon, janitors arrived, accompanied by administrators with walkie-talkies.
Science teacher Kurt Wahl calmed the commotion by explaining Jim’s intentions. But officials still kept a careful eye on the experiment.
It’s a special group of students who make up Troy’s science team. The 15-member team recently took first place at the state Science Olympiad finals, winning a spot at the nationals in Grand Rapids, Mich., that start Friday.
This marks the fourth time in five years that the team has made the nationals, said Dan Jundanian, a science teacher and one of the team coaches. In 1996, they won the nationals, but they were edged out last year by a team from Michigan. This year they hope to regain their title, Jundanian said.
But the students and their mentors know the going will be tough.
“Everything has to go well,” Jundanian said. “You can’t have 23 events and not have the factor of luck in there somewhere. There are two events where we can end up with scrambled eggs.”
Besides practicing the egg drop, students have spent time perfecting their scrambler device, which must transport an egg along a stretch of floor as far as possible without smacking into the finish line.
Mark Rudner, a junior, provided the carbon fibers to make the egg-carrying vehicle lighter and stronger. His teammates have nicknamed him Mr. High Tech.
“I like working with my hands and building things,” said Mark, who also builds and flies model airplanes. “It’s good when it actually works.”
Jim--who in his spare time plays bass in a band--said the group has cracked about 60 eggs preparing for the Olympiad. He also has been working with a bottle rocket, a two-liter plastic bottle with flaps at the end. The rocket is propelled by water and air pressure and can stay a minute or longer in the air, he said.
“The parachute is supposed to come out, but it rarely does,” Jim admitted morosely, holding the rocket.
Like Jim, several other team members have been to the Olympiad before and know one another well.
“We know what everyone’s habits are, their personalities, who’s a procrastinator or lazy,” said Melissa Duan, a junior. “We joke with each other all the time. In that way we are like a family.”
Jundanian said that during their trip to the state finals last year, the group spent most of its time arguing Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
“It’s a different kind of group,” he said.
Then again, Troy is a different kind of school. It’s not unusual to observe students wandering around the magnet school campus, searching bushes for insects for biology classes.
The school and its science team stand in stark contrast to an international report released in February that ranked American 12th-graders in the lower third of 21 nations in tests measuring math and science knowledge.
Recently, team members have been pushing themselves even harder as the tournament approaches. Melissa said she has spent much of her time preparing for the water quality event, which tests for water safety. She has been staying up late, drinking a lot of cola to stay awake.
Junior Jason Wen studies while eating breakfast to prepare for Olympiad tests on physical science and other demanding fields.
Science talent runs strong in his family. His younger brother, Christopher, a seventh-grader at El Rancho Middle School in Anaheim Hills, is on that school’s science team, also headed to Michigan to compete at the Olympiad’s middle school finals. The school placed 12th last year in its division, its first year at the nationals.
Despite their worries, the high school team members find that the competition also brings out particular strengths. In a group where no one is numbers-challenged, several come to senior Matt Lee for help with math problems. Matt has taken eight semesters of math classes at Cal State Fullerton. He took his first college class while in eighth grade.
In preparation for an event testing map reading, Matt has spent hours poring over topographical maps, reviewing longitudes and distances.
Mishaps are common during competition, and the Troy team suffered several during the state finals.
“We fried the power supply in the physics lab,” Jim recalled. And not surprisingly, the rocket’s parachute didn’t open.
