The Chelsea Standard
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Young Beach scientists finish in the top half at state Science Olympiad
By Edward Freundl, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: May 1, 2008
Following a third-place finish at a regional science competition in March, teams from Beach Middle School finished in the top half of the state finals on Saturday.
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Beach made its third consecutive appearance at the state finals, which took place at Michigan State University.
The bright spot for Beach was the team of Sarah Conrad and Zoe Proegler, who repeated their second-place finish in the regionals with their food science project.
"We're simulating the aging of a sliced apple," said Sarah, and Zoe explained that they used hydrogen peroxide and iodine to speed up the familiar browning and puckering of the apple flesh.
"Seventh grader Zoe Proegler and ninth grader Sarah Conrad won a silver medal for their outstanding performance in the Food Science Event," said Science teacher Dave Polley, head coach of the Beach Olympians.
"Coach Christine Forsch is quite pleased."
More than 40 events that took place in various locations on campus, including Chemistry of Food, Balloon Launch Glider, Robocross Challenge, and Scrambler.
"I am very proud of this team," said Polley. "They worked very hard. We dominated the Regionals and went on to face the best in the state."
Beach was among 48 middle schools and junior high schools across the state that advanced from regional competitions in February and March that drew hundreds of teams.
Events included experiments in life science, earth science, physical science, health science and technology.
"We have excellent quality students and excellent coaches," Polley said.
"We had more assistance from the community than ever this year. This is the best team Beach has ever had."
Beach competed in 23 events, some of which were more technology-based than purely science.
"Clearly a lot of the Olympians in the tech events are going to be engineers — you can already spot it in them," Polley said.
One of the tech events will actually provide a training ground for the robotics team at the high school level.
The "Robocross" team of seventh-graders Sam Christie and Shane McGrath took first place at the regionals with their unique design.
The challenge was to design a device to start in one corner of a tabletop playing field, pick up objects of varying sizes and weights in another corner, and drop them into a small plastic coffee can "goal" in the opposite corner.
The objects consisted of four ping pong balls, four Lego blocks, four D-cell batteries and a tennis ball.
A time limit of three minutes adds to the challenge.
With the help of adult advisers and some spare parts from the Chelsea High School robotics team, Sam and Shane looked at the problem from a completely different angle.
Instead of taking the objects to the goal, their robot picks up the goal and brings it to the objects.
"The robot chassis evolved from a remote-control truck," said team coach Sam Guysky.
Brian McGrath, the other coach and Shane's father, said the design resulted from a lot of brainstorming.
"This was idea No. 200," he said. "We had some stuff that was just off the charts, and ended up with 20 to 50 that we thought could work."
Unfortunately, the stellar showing at the regionals became a distant memory when a malfunction at the state event stalled their momentum.
"They knocked over the can in the first five seconds and never could get it going," Polley said. "Welcome to the world of engineering."
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