Doesn’t take a rocket scientist

Marisa O’Neil

It isn’t every day that high school students beat out NASA rocket

scientists.

But last week at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s annual Invention

Challenge Competition, students in Costa Mesa High School’s

Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement class hit the mark --

or closest to the mark -- with a glider they designed. Their entry

not only beat out other Southern California schools, but gliders

built by JPL engineers.

“It’s not that we’re suddenly smarter than all the people who

built the Mars Rover,” Steve Nelson, who teaches the class, said.

“But we’ve been doing this over and over. [The engineers] put theirs

together in a few hours and didn’t really test it.”

Measurement and repetition, he stressed, are the secrets of

effective engineering. Every student in his class designed a glider,

and a series of tests and constant practice helped hone their

prototypes.

This year’s JPL contest theme, “The Wright Turn,” celebrated the

100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight on Dec. 17,

1903. For the JPL flight, the gliders took off from a specially

designed launcher and had to make a right turn to land on a target 40

feet away.

Nelson’s class entered two nearly identical gliders, each about

one meter long. Seventeen-year-old Joseph Powers’ glider won the

preliminary competition, and 14-year-old Ted Lee’s won the finals,

landing 21 inches from the target, closer than the rocket scientists’

glider.

“I find it funny,” Joseph said of beating the JPL entries. “We

were there having fun and goofing off. That just goes to show

[science] doesn’t have to be boring.”

Both gliders followed the same basic design -- a balsa wood

fuselage, carbon fiber tail and foam wings bought from a hobby store

and attached to the body with a rubber band. Using a rubber band

minimizes damage during crash landings, Nelson said, and allows for

adjustment between flights.

Joseph and Ted worked together during the competition, sharing

data from their flights and adjusting accordingly. When the spring in

JPL’s launcher proved stronger than the NASA-made spring in the

launcher their class built, their flights started to overshoot the

target.

After some compensation, Joseph’s flight didn’t turn. Instead, it

flew straight into a crowd of spectators. But, Nelson said, Joseph

didn’t panic.

“He just said, ‘OK, we need more wing angle,’ and made the

adjustment,” Nelson said. “On the [last] flight, we nailed it.”

Launching the winning flight was exciting, Ted said, but outdoing

professional engineers was even more exciting. He and Joseph both

said they want to eventually work as mechanical engineers.

Nelson’s intensive science class, which uses a hands-on approach,

is part of University of California’s outreach program. The program,

Nelson said, provides science learning opportunities like

scholarships for students who might otherwise not go to college.

Funding to the program, however, is threatened by the governor’s

planned budget cuts. As it stands now, Nelson said, the statewide

program may shut down Jan. 1.

* MARISA O’NEIL covers education and may be reached at (949)

574-4268 or by e-mail at [email protected].