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Richland students dominate state technology competition
By Chad Mearns
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 4:46 PM EDT
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| Wildlife Conservation Officers Shawn Harshaw, left, and Tim Fazi receive some help weighing a bear caught for research last week on Laurel Mountain. (Photo by Chad Mearns) |
Richland students made more than just a strong first impression at the Pennsylvania Technology Student Association Conference, the first ever attended by a Johnstown area school. They made history.
The conference is a three-day competition in which more than 1,500 students vied for top honors in an array of scientific and technological challenges. At the event, held April 9-12 at Seven Springs Resort, 18 of the 20 Richland students in attendance placed within the top 10 in the state.
Most impressive, though, was the performance of the school's F1 in Schools teams in both the middle school and high school divisions.
F1 in Schools, a nonprofit organization endorsed by Formula One Racing head Bernie Eccelstone, began as a way to promote engineering as a career path for high school students. Although not officially part of the TSA events, F1 typically holds its competitions during the conference.
The F1 event pits teams of students against each other in a quest to design, build and race the fastest miniature carbon dioxide-powered race car possible — a task the Richland teams took very seriously.
Richland's middle school team, comprised of eighth-grader Sami Mihelic and seventh-graders Hunter Bomba, Kiana Fregly, Megan Gipe, Whitney Hernandez and Caitlin Lucas, recorded the top time in the middle school division.
The team, known as Team P!nkz, was also the first all-girl squad to compete, much less win, the competition.
"Out of the 1,500 students up there, they were definitely the talk of the conference," said Richland technology teacher Brandt Hutzel, one of the group's advisors at the conference.
The girls stood out at the conference, Hutzel said, not only for their neon pink car and matching pink attire, but also for their impressive time.
The girls' car ran the 65-foot race track in 1.125 seconds, a time that also beat all but one of the competing high school teams.
"Until our boys went, they beat every high school team that was there, plus every middle school team. The only team they didn't beat was our high school team, which is pretty amazing," Hutzel said.
Among the teams bested by the girls was the squad from Pine Richland High School, where Hutzel taught last year.
"They couldn't believe that they got beat by a team primarily of all seventh grade girls," Hutzel said.
That reaction, Fregly said, was common at the conference.
"People were very surprised that we were an all-girl team. We were doing something that many people might consider boyish because it involves cars, cutting stuff out, painting it, doing the work. They were surprised we would do something like that."
The girls' time was topped only by Richland's high school team, which included seniors Dan Barefoot and Robbie Thomas and juniors Shawn Sichak, Mike Sprain and Elliott Watt. The boys' car ran the course in 1.094 seconds. The winning time at nationals last year was 1.108 and the world record is 1.02 seconds.
The time was announced by F1 in Schools executive director Paul Koontz to be in the top 5 percent worldwide.
The key, Barefoot said, was a specially designed set of wings the team added to the front of the car.
"I was completely skeptical about it," he said.
The wing, the brainchild of Watt, distributed the wind resistance onto four separate surfaces, giving the team a unique advantage.
"That wing is a key contributor because it's different from what other people have seen," Barefoot said.
Twenty percent of the team's racing score was determined by the "impulse race," in which team members must react to a flashing light to start the car speeding down the track. In that event, Barefoot himself provided another distinct advantage.
An avid hunter, Barefoot already knew about reaction time and reflexes. To better the amount of time needed to push the button when prompted by the light, he researched ways to improve his reaction time even further.
"I was slowing my breathing down to get my heart pumping faster. It actually kind of worked."
According to Barefoot's research, the human brain takes 0.11 seconds to process and react to information, such as a flashing light. Barefoot reacted in 0.079 seconds.
"I think what happened is I flinched and bumped it just as the light turned on," he said, although Hutzel seemed noticeably more impressed.
"It's almost not possible," he said.
The students scores were also determined by their presentations and written documentation of the design and building process.
The contest requires that teams adhere to a strict set of specifications ranging from the cars' weight to the processes used to yield the finished product. Because the students must create two virtually identical cars, very little actual hands-on work occurs. Instead, they utilize computer-aided design and manufacturing technology almost exclusively.
Among the software used by both teams is a program that analyzes aerodynamic capabilities.
"It predicts how the car will perform before you actually make it. It's the same exact software Jaguar uses, except theirs costs $800,000 and ours costs maybe $850 or something," Hutzel explained.
Now, both teams are again busy tweaking their cars in preparation for the national conference, to be held in Orlando, Fla. June 28 through July 2. The event is expected to draw more than 5,000 competing students from across the United States, Germany, Sweden and Peru.
"In Florida, it's going to be a completely different surrounding. It's going to be tougher competition, so we have to build on that," Fregly said.
Her teammate, Sami Mihelic, agreed, but was confident her team could continue their success.
"I think we have a really good chance," she said.
Barefoot said the boys were busy thinking of improvements even during the state conference.
"We have a lot of ideas for tweaking the car. We want to make it as fast as possible. I think we located some mistakes that were on the car before the race, and we still had the fastest time," he said.
Win or lose, Hutzel said he and co-advisor Tanner Huffman, also a technology teacher at Richland, are proud of their students.
"These students were here towards the end for the last month five days a week for one and a half or two hours after school and for eight hours on Saturdays," he said. "They did an amazing job."
Also during the TSA conference, Barefoot, Sichak and Thomas took first place in the Engineering Design category for creating a turkey caller that Barefoot is planning to soon shop to manufacturers. Watt and Thomas took second place in the same event for pioneering a new gun-loading mechanism.
Juniors Ian Lynch and Josh Rovder took second in the Radio Controlled Transportation category for developing a toy-collecting robot, and eighth graders Amanda Potasnik and Kaylee Hollan placed second in the state in the Construction Challenge, for which the pair designed and built a bridge over a stream along a walkway in Highland Park in Richland Township.
Barefoot also placed third in a Materials Process challenge, and Hollan and Tiffany Haymaker, grade 8, took third in the Environmental Challenge event.
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