They’re Winning the Education Game

While you are relaxing over your coffee and newspaper this morning, five North Hollywood High School students, possibly this very minute, are defining the word “selenologist” or explaining which color the human eye is most sensitive to in daylight.

You have not even woken up yet--you aren’t even quite sure it is daylight--and, three time zones away, Daniel Bersohn, Nina Han, Tyler Rubin, Jackie Wong and Jeff Zira are identifying the liquid that makes up Triton’s ocean. Not to mention identifying Triton.

The five self-proclaimed nerds are in Chevy Chase, Md., today and tomorrow representing Los Angeles against 60 teams from 40 states in the U.S. Department of Energy National Science Bowl.

That’s right, Los Angeles, which is not often paired in the same sentence with words like educational excellence these days. But this is no fluke: North Hollywood High placed second in the prestigious tournament two years in a row. To get there again this year, the team had to win the regional Science Bowl sponsored by the Department of Water and Power.

Team members also had to put in hundreds of hours studying together, an endeavor they describe in one word:

Fun.

These teenage whiz kids will have no trouble rattling off answers--lunar geologist, the color green, nitrogen, Neptune’s moon (but you knew that)--to any question posed in biology, chemistry, physics, calculus, astronomy, trigonometry, earth and physical sciences and computer programming.

The North Hollywood team is hoping that their third trip is charmed and they’ll bring home the top prize this year. But whatever happens, they’re winners.