Apprentices Get Hands-On Training Students Encouraged In Math, Science

Laura Thackray has two summer jobs.

In one, she’s a conductor, loading Silverwood Theme Park customers onto a miniature train.

In the other, she’s an engineer - in physics.

Five days a week, the 1994 Lakeland High School graduate clips on a security pass to the U.S. Navy’s Acoustic Research Detachment and enters the cordoned-off laboratory compound to analyze sound velocity from the depths of Lake Pend Oreille.

She’s one of five North Idaho students to take part in a summer apprenticeship program designed to inspire future scientists and mathematicians.

This is the first year the U.S. Department of Defense included Idaho students and the Bayview research station in the decade-old program. Nationwide, 630 students participate in the eight-week apprenticeship.

“To be here is exciting, because you’re on a different level,” Thackray said Thursday from a small, equipment-cluttered barge at the Bayview research center.

At Silverwood, Thackray’s co-workers are mostly other teenagers, who typically converse in familiar, understandable slang.

At the Navy research center, Thackray works with highly trained engineering scientists, nearly all of whom are men, who speak in a technical language peppered with innumerable acronyms. She jokes she needed a dictionary of Navy acronyms when she first arrived seven weeks ago.

She also became a quick study of sound velocity. One of her mentors at the research center loaned her a physics textbook that covered the subject.

“I had to read one chapter three times before I understood it,” admits the honor student with a smile.

But now Thackray herself reels off acronyms like the experts while explaining why her research project is relevant to the efficient operation of “ATAC”, the acoustic communication system for the model submarines used at the research center.

Thackray and her four peers will travel to Washington, D.C., next week to give oral presentations on their projects at George Washington University. Each of them also will pick up a $1,300 scholarship.

The other four apprentices are Amy Bartlett, a Sandpoint High School graduate; Karl Sutton, a Post Falls High graduate; Nicholas Peck, a Sandpoint senior; and Kevin Collins, another Sandpoint senior.

Collins’ project on the effects of “multi-path sound propagation” required many days out on a barge, lowering underwater microphones for acoustic testing and data gathering.

His last few weeks he spent primarily in front of a computer, analyzing the data. He not only learned about computers and the physics of sound, but a little about working in a high-security facility.

For instance, he had his cassette player seized for violating the ban on recording devices.

However, his job has been “all unclassified. Really boring, I guess,” he said modestly. But his lively eyes, magnified by thick eyeglasses, and permanent grin defy any suggestion that Collins has been bored by the experience.

While in Washington, 16-year-old Peck will describe the process he went through to design a dihedral fin for one of the model submarines.

Peck’s interest in aeronautical engineering suited him well for that particular project, said his mentor, Steve Finley. Peck also drafted a new map for the base during his first week there.

Though the staff had its reservations about the apprenticeship program at first, Finley said the concerns were unfounded.

“It definitely required some time,” Finley said. “But overall, there were more benefits than what it cost in time.”