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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 25, 2015)
Wednesday, February 25, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon SCIENCE FAIR: Dozens of displays covered many aspects of field Continued from page 1 3D flight simulator. “You get to fly it around like you’re piloting a real plane and you can see all the instruments, including the cockpit,” said Adam Novotny, an intern at the company. Over at the Lego Robotics exhibit, Ramsey Schar, a stu- dent at Sisters Middle School, had her mousetrap car on dis- play waiting for the Design, Construct, Compete (DCC) event to begin. “I have four mousetraps powering my car,” said Schar. “You connect the long string to the axle and then spin the wheels, and let go. The mousetraps will pull the car forward. It goes slow, but it can go far.” The DCC contest, which has changed from the cata- pult challenge to a contest featuring mousetrap cars, took place in the main gym conducted by physics teacher Rob Corrigan. The cars must travel a certain distance, then stop within a circle. “We wanted to do some- thing new and different this year. We wanted to try another challenge to demonstrate the students’ engineering abili- ties,” Corrigan said. “Some of the participants have been asking questions and calibrat- ing for several weeks now.” Doug Mohr, of Mohr Solutions, a local critical power and telecommunica- tions company, had their very first exhibit at the science fair. “One of my engineers is demonstrating how critical power works. We do critical power and during a weather event the lights stay on and communication systems continue to work,” Mohr explained. “There is a simu- lation for kids to operate to create a wind tunnel. The wind will knock the tower over and the lights will go out. The power goes out on the grid, but our battery backup power kicks in right away.” Some students taught spectators about the power of pulleys as they hoisted them- selves up on a pulley system, while other students learned and demonstrated how just the right folding of a paper airplane could fly the greatest distance. We wanted to do something new and different this year. We wanted to try another challenge to demonstrate the students’ engineering abilities. — Rob Corrigan Volunteer Alan Schei- degger was keeping time and distance for the students as the small gym was converted into a testing zone for paper airplanes. “Last year one of the stu- dents flew his plane the entire distance of this gym, and we already have one young aero- nautic engineer getting close to that record,” Scheidegger said. Mathew Falconer, Sis- ters Middle School student, decided to build a homemade grill out of old metal pieces, and with the supervision of his mother, Tammy, they demonstrated his invention by cooking little pieces of bacon on the grill set up on bricks. In one corner of the fair the reverberating pop from the Ping Pong Ball exhibit, which operates solely on atmo- spheric air pressure, could be heard during demonstrations, and every once in a while you could see flames of fire simu- lating a dust explosion at the exhibit appropriately named “Dragon’s Breath.” SHS 12th-graders Matalie Marshall and Laynie Hildeb- rand were in cahoots creating a project that would simulate an explosion. “We wanted to do some- thing exciting, so we decided to educate people on how a dust explosion can happen so quickly, whether in a coal mine, sugar mill or flour mill, anywhere there is lots of dust. Just one spark of heat and it can cause a big combustion. It happens more than you think,” Marshall said. Central Oregon Rocket Club had a display table with model rockets for viewing, and also had small model rocket launches outdoors in the baseball field for specta- tors to watch at two separate times during the fair. “We are a group of enthu- siasts that enjoy building model rockets as a hobby, and we like to emphasize scale modeling and fine detail. Some rockets are real simple in their design and use basic single parachute recovery systems, while other rockets are extremely complex using staged motors, advanced elec- tronics,” said club member Chris McDougall. Right around 2:30 p.m., a loud reverberating noise began that sounded suspi- ciously like a fire alarm. With all the noise from chatter and demonstrations going on, it was hard to figure out at first. An announcement let the hun- dreds of folks know to evacu- ate the building. Luckily the entrance to the high school was in view. Students, spectators, vol- unteers and exhibitors waited patiently outside the front entrance, and about 17 min- utes later all was well after Sisters Camp-Sherman fire department turned off the 23 photo by Jerry baldock First place in the mousetrap car challenge went to Josh Liddell and his dad, Eric Liddell. alarm that was set off due to winner was Sisters Middle smoke particles from bacon School student Josh Liddell. cooking on the homemade The SciArt contest fea- grill exhibit. tured photographs that were Though a couple of min- on display by Sisters students utes delayed, the mousetrap who captured science in the car contest, another tour art of photography. There was of the star lab, and the last a first-place tie for 7th-grader rocket launch went on with- Dan Schmidt for his “Raining out a hitch. After over an hour Fire” and his “Bee Awesome” of competition, the first-place photograph. Beautifully maintained! 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