Stretching brains

First rule of the science competition: don’t touch the piano. Second rule: there’s no time to get lattes at the coffee stand in the lobby. Third rule: have fun.

More than 170 middle school students from all over Spokane piled into Gonzaga University’s Cataldo Hall on Monday morning, ready to test their skills as windmill operators, foil boat floaters and straw tower builders.

Co-sponsored by Eastern Washington University, Gonzaga University and Washington State University Spokane, the competition was held by the Spokane Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement Center, a state-funded science program integrated in Spokane schools.

And it was quite a riot.

This year’s main component of the MESA competition was the wind energy challenge: constructing a windmill outfitted with a retractable string, student teams timed how long it took for their mill to lift and pull various weights, as a way to determine how much energy their windmill produced.

“The wind energy challenge is actually a nationwide effort,” said Janet Ebaugh, Spokane MESA director. “One or two of the winning Spokane teams will go to Seattle for the state competition and then maybe from there to the national competition in Denver. It’s a big deal.”

To create a level playing field the windmills were all built with the same base materials provided by MESA.

Some had six blades, some had four and they were all powered by ordinary box fans.

The student teams were recorded on video, so their efforts could be documented in case they advanced to the state contest.

“It’s going to be awhile before we have those results,” Ebaugh said.

The two other science experiments weren’t part of the national competition.

“They are more like enrichment experiences,” Ebaugh said. “I think we could have more of those, next year.”

One task was to construct a tower as tall and light as possible, using drinking straws and tape.

Glover Middle School’s Gupreet Singh quickly took charge of his team’s straw tower construction.

“Dude,” he told his team mates, “we’ll do it just like we did it last year. Now give me some tape. Tape. I need more tape.”

Solidly anchored on a square cardboard base the tower soon reached over their heads.

The other task was to build a boat out of aluminum foil and load as many pennies as possible into it, while keeping the boat afloat.

One of the teams from Chase Middle School had so much success constructing their foil boat that they ran out of pennies.

Chase student Char Earthman quickly went to get more, and the team continued to load the boat – one penny at the time – until the inevitable moment: “It’s gonna go down,” yelled Earthman, and it did, folding in the middle and sinking to the bottom of the little wash basin it was floating in.

Both experiments were judged on getting the best results – the tallest tower and the boat that could carry the most pennies – using the least amount of material.

MESA’s focus is to get under-represented students involved in traditional science classes.

“Core knowledge in math and science are main precursors for a solid college career,” said Ebaugh, adding that the MESA program in Spokane is unique because it’s at the schools every day.

“We are directly involved in the math and science classrooms – and the students know there’s something going on with MESA every week,” said Ebaugh. “We are at all the middle schools and high schools, except Havermale.”

At this time of the year, where many students are signing up for next year’s classes, Ebaugh said the competition also serves to draw attention to MESA’s work.

“We do have a focus on under-represented students, like females of all ethnicities, Native Americans, African Americans, Latino students and Pacific Islanders,” said Ebaugh. “It’s critical for parents to know that MESA is an option and it’s integrated right into their school.”