Building submarines with film cannisters and pennies

I have never been good at keeping a journal. Henceforth, therefore, and thusly, the rest of these posts will be made from good old Albany, California. I figured I wouldn’t leave you hanging, especially after you all saw us on KTVU, right?

Saturday was Science Day, the day that we finally engaged in what brought us to DC. There were three lectures, and then an Interactive Science Discovery (believe me, not as exciting as it sounds…).

The first lecture was held in the auditorium, and everyone attended. It was about solid state lighting, which is basically creating a “lightbulb” of sorts from organic molecules, rather than gas or a metal filament. From the program, “This lecture will explain why it is so hard to make an efficient lightbulb and how you might light the energy-efficient home of the future, from glowing semiconductors to light emitting plastic.” The lecturer was Dr. Paul Burrows, and it seemed like most of us were feeling like we had heard enough about how we needed to be energy efficient and blah blah blah, but then he pulled out a plastic sheet that looked like it could have been normal, 8.5″x11″ sheet of paper that looked completely normal on one side but was lit up like a fluorescent bulb on the other. It was very cool. Apparently this type of technology is already being used in some cell phone screens, and one company in Japan is making a TV with it. Eventually, manufacturers will be able to print them out on huge rolls, like newspapers are printed. My big question is whether they will try to shape this material to look like light bulbs.

The the remaining two lectures, the science bowlers got to choose from a menu of four to five different lectures. The first one that I went to was called “Exploring Extinction and Invasion in Ecosystems with Network Science.” The lecturer, Dr. Neo Martinez, was a total Berkeley hippie. His labe is the Pacific Ecoinformatics and Computational Ecology Lab, or PEaCE Lab. In the lecture, he told us about how he and his team were able to learn about ecosystems through creating mathematical models that mimic what happens in the real world. He showed us 3-D digital models of complex food chains that pulsated and fell apart when keystone species were taken out. He described predators that wait for their food until the opportune time as “chill-out” predators. It was great. For pictures of food webs, visit foodwebs.org. The pictures are in the food web gallery (link on the left), and apparently there’s a video on the site as well, but I haven’t been able to find it yet.

The second lecture I attended was called “Science and Storytelling in Forensic Pathology.” The woman who gave the lecture, Dr. Wendy Gunther, was obsessed with DEAD BODIES, which made some sense, seeing as she is a medical examiner - a person who does autopsies. In any case she spent the lecture telling us, and showing us (through pictures), the DEAD BODIES that she has had to work with. And yes, she did put a lot of emphasis on the DEAD BODIES. It was very gruesome, but I did learn to tell a bullet entry hole in a skull from an exit hole.

After the lectures, all the teams participated in the part of the competition called the Interactive Science Discovery, which is a convoluted way of saying hands-on lab test. Every division had a different task with each task matching the subject area of the division’s namesake. For example, Arrhenius was chemistry, Bromery was geophysics, Curie was earth science, Darwin was biology, and so on. This part of the competition wasn’t really part of the competition, but it did serve as a tiebreaker for round robin disputes. And the winner of each division got $500 for their science department.

Albany was in the Fermi Division, which made us general science. We had 30 minutes to build a submarine out of a film cannister, pennies, and antacid that would sink to the bottom of a large graduated cylinder, stay there for a second, then float back to the top. We were told that we could use any of the materials on the table. That was a lie. We spent half the time designing a submarine using the plastic bag given to us before being told that we actually couldn’t use the bag. Thank you science judges. We did not do so well in this part of the game (seventh out of eight), and we were glad that we didn’t need to use it to break a tie (as you will see in the next post). Don’t blame us - we just clearly haven’t gotten enough training in dealing with incompetent administration.

And then - I can’t believe I almost forgot - was the Rules Review, everyone’s favorite part of the entire event (yes, I’m being facetious). In the Rules Review, chocolate mini-brains and ears are given out as prizes for the scavenger hunt I talked about earlier and various science activities, people are admonished for doing things wrong, and the Science Bowl alumni go over the rules of the game. It’s all very fun and most teams bring along study material. The best part is the end, where everyone gets to ask questions about all the nitty-gritty rules about interrupting and blurting and who loses points if the buzzer system catches on fire. I do give props to the presenters for dealing with the questions with a piercing air of authority and disdain. It was quite amusing.

Coming up next, the actual competition…

No comments yet.

Leave a Comment

All comments are moderated. If your comment contains profanity or libelous content, please don't waste our time.