Science, Over Easy Students At Olympiad Try To Keep Their Egg Up On The Competition

A crowd of 30 people stood with heads tilted back and eyes set upon two kids above them about to drop an egg.

Ferris High School sophomore Joslin Streich strapped the egg in a homemade harness while her brother, Brent, measured the bungee cord.

Then Joslin moved to the balcony and let it go.

Just above the floor, the egg sprang back up. A perfect drop. The crowd cheered.

“We were up ‘til 3 o’clock in the morning trying to get it right at home,” Joslin said afterward.

The Streichs joined more than 300 middle and high school students from Eastern Washington on Saturday in the annual Science Olympiad. The daylong tournament at Eastern Washington University featured competitions in 46 events.

Eggs, bottle rockets, rubber band-powered planes and other contraptions sailed through the skies - and some campus buildings.

The kids got help from EWU students serving as volunteers.

“This is great,” said Jeremy Richardson, an EWU senior majoring in biology and education. “There wasn’t anything like this when I was in high school eight years ago.”

Richardson and fellow Eastern education student Darrin McComas were working the bungee-egg competition.

“It’s a good learning experience for us,” McComas said. “We’re going to be their teachers soon.”

The egg drop - actually an experiment in measuring elasticity - was a popular addition to the Olympiad. The students with the most successful drops got their eggs closest to the floor.

Students used elastic strings for bungee cords. Travis Windberg and Sean Jacobson from Rogers High were certainly enterprising - using underwear elastic.

Their egg splattered on the floor, though, leaving a white-and-yellow streak. Neither Windberg nor Jacobson would divulge whose underwear the elastic came from.

Before the Streichs executed their perfect drop, Rachel Jordan and Andrea Jones from Cheney High took their turn, confident they had done all the calculations.

The two stayed outside until 11:30 p.m. Friday hanging from a tree. They dropped egg after egg, taking precise measurements.

At EWU, the girls’ first drop hit the floor. The second was 63 centimeters short.

But the point of the games wasn’t winning or losing, according to Cheney High teacher Tom Stralser.

“All of these kids are self-motivated and dying to learn,” Stralser said. “These kids are hot rods. They are the keys to our future discoveries.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo