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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Open daily in The Ranch Welcome Center!
photo by Jerry baldock
Sasha Komar flew a four-prop helicopter drone during science fair action last Saturday.
541-595-3838 at The Ranch | 541-549-5555 in Sisters