Despite cargo’s crackup, ‘Mars Landers’ offer lessons

There was carnage in the commons last week at Central Valley High School as students lined the railing of a second-floor walkway and dropped raw eggs over the side.

The eggs weren’t supposed to break.

Students in Krista Larsen’s freshman science class were told to build a “Mars Lander” out of construction paper, tissue paper and string that would gently float their eggs to the ground.

Students were supposed to follow the general plans of the real Mars Lander, which used a four-sided design to cushion the Mars Rovers inside, but some students had their own ideas.

“You know what we should do?” Chase Cramer-Meads asked his group. “Just build a big padded ball without a parachute. I bet it’ll work.”

Another team just rolled the construction paper into a tube and stuffed cotton balls and empty plastic bags in each end for padding.

Partners D’Andre Seymour and Anastasiya Chernaya were the first to master the mandated shape, with the cotton balls and plastic bags stuffed inside with the egg. “That way the egg doesn’t break,” Seymour said.

In the end, it did. The only egg that survived intact without so much as a crack was rolled up in the tube. “I think ours is a hard-boiled egg,” joked Jack Hochberg, who was on the successful team.

The egg with no parachute at all hit with a thud and smashed. “Oh, that didn’t sound good,” said one student after another egg landed with a particularly sharp crack.

Larsen is putting to use the information she learned over the summer at a NASA camp for science teachers.

She took part in a mock shuttle mission and spacewalk, sat in a one-sixth gravity chair and participated in a mock helicopter crash and rescue.

“Those were the big-ticket experiences, but there were so many clinics and lectures,” she said.

Larsen also met four astronauts. The experiences were crammed into a week of 12- and 13-hour days at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Alabama.

“You were just trying to absorb all you could,” Larsen said.

Auctioneer is national leader

Randy Wells didn’t set out to be an auctioneer, much less president of the 5,000-member National Auctioneers Association.

The Post Falls resident and current NAA president mostly just wanted “to work hard.”

Wells is co-owner of MR Auction, executive vice president and owner of Tranzon Northwest, and a licensed real estate agent with Exit Realty Coeur d’Alene.

Wells has conducted more than 1,900 auctions since 1985, including estate, business liquidation, automobile, benefit and real estate auctions.

He travels across the United States as president of the NAA and as an affiliate of MarkNet Alliance, a national network of auction companies.

He is an instructor for NAA Education and is one of the instructors for CAI, the highest designation available in the auction industry.

Wells said that the industry is strong.

“My plan is that until the handle in my gavel gets loose, I’ll still be here,” he said.