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Can
competitions raise 'cool' factor of math, science?
May 16, 2008
The Christian Science Monitor
By Patrik Jonsson
Staff Writer
ATLANTA - This is
what high school seniors Will and Greg Kennedy, two-headed
researchers from Jacksonville, Fla., are up against this
week as they compete for medals at the Super Bowl of
science:
- The kid
who built a bicycle - using only wooden parts.
- The teen who created a new kind of computer search program based on an
idea called "ant colony optimization."
- The New Mexico boy who built a two-inch-wide small-well pump used to
draw drinking water from deep tests wells.
How well the
Kennedy twins' research on cancer drug interactions ranks
against these and 1,244 other projects entered in this
year's International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) -
20 percent of which already have patents pending - isn't as
important, the boys say, as their peers paying attention to
their work.
"Just getting to
this point is like winning something big," says Will, who
partnered with his brother and the Mayo Clinic for their
research. "Everybody feels like a celebrity here."
At a time when the
US is desperate to halt its slide in the world's math and
science rankings, ISEF is one of a growing number of uber-competitive
math bowls and science fairs that are putting the imprimatur
of cool back into physics, trigonometry, and hydraulics.
Whether such science project showdowns can truly inspire
America's far-flung talent pools to learn what US Education
Secretary Margaret Spellings calls "pocket protector
skills," however, still remains to be seen.
"I think we have a
generation where math and science became uncool," says Dr.
Jim Hamos, program director of the Math and Science
Partnership Program at the National Science Foundation in
Arlington, Va. "People are wondering what's the
galvanizing moment [for math and science education], and
competitiveness may be that galvanizer. It's one way
to make science and math cool ... as opposed to abstract and
minimalist."
On the wane
since Apollo
At the end of the Apollo space program, the US
contributed about 75 percent of technological breakthroughs
to the world. That figure is now less than 25 percent,
says Rick Chappell, director of the Dyer Observatory in
Nashville, Tenn. What's more, 22 percent of technical
and scientific jobs in the US today are held by foreign-born
workers who could repatriate if opportunities arise in their
home countries, warns the 2005 "Innovation and a Competitive
US Economy" report issued by the Information Technology
Association of America.
Indeed, the lack
of a unifying national scientific mission like going to the
moon is one reason why not enough US-born kids are digging
harder into their math and science texts, experts say.
The outsourcing of technical jobs to developing nations is
another.
"We're not getting
the layer below the cream," says John Clark, a former ISEF
contestant and judge, whose son, James, built the small-well
pump. "The fact is we've got Bill Gates 2.0 floating
around here somewhere. We've just got to find him."
Indeed, here at
the ISEF, the Kennedy twins are getting a taste of the new
competition: The growth of the fair comes primarily
from overseas, where contestants from Sweden, India, and
even, for the first time, Nigeria showcase the up-and-coming
brains of the global scientific community.
"The kinds of
competitiveness that plays into [events like ISEF] has to in
a few years take care of the bigger issue, global
competition," says Skip Fennell, an education professor at
McDaniel College in Westminster, Md. "One level of
competition will hopefully infuse the other."
The US has spent
$600 million since 2002 through the National Science
Foundation on 52 national projects that attempt to reform
the way science and math are taught at the elementary and
secondary level. Some of that money has gone to seed
local science bowls and math bees, fueling what appears to
be a growing interest among kids and parents in math and
science smackdowns.
Expanding its
competition to include 11-year-olds, the Alabama-born
MathCounts competition, which has been featured on ESPN,
crowned its first sixth-grade winner on May 9, Darryl Wu of
Bellevue, Wash.
The FIRST Robotics
Competition, founded by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the
Segway, reached a record 37,000 high school students in 41
regional competitions this year, with the final showdown
held at the Georgia Dome here in Atlanta in mid-April.
The Robowranglers of Greenville, Texas; the ThunderChickens
from Sterling Heights, Mich.; and Simbotics of St.
Catherine's, Ontario, won top honors for building robots
able to complete an obstacle course.
In Birmingham,
Ala., the six-year-old National Math Bee, open to elementary
school students, has grown from a 114 competitors to more
than 15,000 in the past five years. An Internet
competition with the final competition held in April of each
year in Birmingham, the bee could reach half a million
competitors by 2010, its founder predicts.
And while ISEF is
considered the grandpa of science fairs, it held its
largest-ever event this year, drawing entries from 51
countries. Cities like Atlanta lobby Olympics-style
for the honor of hosting the event.
More science
students still needed
But even as nerds and geeks - witness TV's "Beauty and
the Geek" - have risen in stature on America's cultural
cool-meter, that cachet doesn't always add up to inspire
students to explore the sciences. Too few students
from urban minority districts and rural areas are enticed by
the exploratory aspects of the heavy sciences.
Competitive math and science events raise interest, but it's
not enough, experts say.
"In many ways,
science fairs and math competitions amplify to the
self-elected that they've made the right choice, but it
doesn't bring in that other 20 percent that we need," says
Dr. Chappell in Nashville. "We're trying to push them
into math and science, but we haven't pulled them into math
and science."
If there's such a
thing as competitive calculator mashing, Sarah Lee Sellers
would get the medal. A high school junior from
Hedgesville, W.Va., Sarah spend 2,000 hours - and burned out
two calculators - created a handmade 111 by 111 prime magic
square out of only Eisenstein prime numbers. (If you
must ask, a magic square's columns all add up to the same
number, while an Eisenstein prime is any number where 3n-1
equals a prime.) She even managed to sneak a cryptic
message - "Love" - in the top center.
A testament to a
rigorous mind, Sarah's accomplishment - whether it medals or
not at ISEF - has already sparked interest in math among
classmates back in Hedgesville, she says. And when a
gaggle of local elementary school students gathers around
her booth, she explains sweetly, holding up her giant magic
square: "You can do anything you want to if you put
your mind to it."
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