Science projects abound at GHS camp

Let the science games begin!

This was the thought on Thursday when 22 budding scientists wrapped up a week of dabbling in physics, chemistry, biology and anatomy with competitions in the first Science Games camp at Glacier High School.

Fourth- through sixth-graders tested the strength of bridges made out of Popsicle sticks and glue. They launched rockets, tried to outrun each other in car races propelled by inflated balloons and ate liquid nitrogen ice cream.

The day was full of surprises, especially during the bridge competition where students tested the strength of bridges built with Popsicle sticks and glue.

Students gathered their bridges from tables covered in lab manuals, safety goggles and protractors, bringing them up to the front of the room where they would span across two tables.

The first group, 9-year-olds Peyton Bicha and Ethan Dykstra, started with light weights, slowly increasing the amount. At 2,500 grams, Dykstra punched the air with his fist and shouted, “Yes!”

Campers crowded in, trying to predict when it would break with the careful placement of each additional weight.

“Why does everyone assume it’s going to break?” Bicha asked. “It hasn’t broken yet.”

It took 25 pounds to break the middle of the bridge, much to the amazement of everyone, including Science Games director and Glacier chemistry teacher Todd Morstein and co-leader and Glacier biology teacher Ben Young.

“Well done,” Young said. “That was a huge surprise.”

Morstein said they hadn’t anticipated any of the bridges would hold that much weight, so instead of starting with gram weights he increased it to 10-pound weight plates.

Of all the bridges, it was 12-year-olds Noah Chamberlain and Ethan Woods whose bridge proved to be the mightiest design. As the weight increased, so did the noise and excitement. Astonished campers clapped when the bridge withstood 50 pounds. One camper exclaimed how that was more than their younger sister weighed. Finally, at 67.5 pounds the bridge broke.

Campers had looked at a variety of bridge designs to come up with their concepts. Chamberlain and Woods decided to use a Warren Truss bridge made up of equilateral triangles.

“We decided we kind of liked the Warren and ended up putting a little more Popsicle sticks on the walls,” Chamberlain said.

Competition day was a culmination of numerous projects that included dissecting pig hearts and lungs and fish and making stretchy Jell-O-like slime and the non-Newtonian fluid oobleck.

“Oobleck is a liquid and a solid,” depending on how a person handles it, said camp counselor 18-year-old Spencer Johnson.

The cornstarch and water substance may be simple to make out of cornstarch and water, but “a lot of chemistry is going on,” Johnson said.

Kendal Morin, 10, thought making slime and oobleck on chemistry day was great.

“Science is very, very cool,” Morin said.

Johnson, who will be a senior this year at Glacier, agreed.

“I wanted to show kids how cool science can be,” Johnson said. “Most people don’t realize how much science they’re doing every day.”