SMS students win DaVinci Challenge

Six sixth-grade students of Sisters Middle School climbed to a pinnacle in the world of scientific and engineering creativity, winning the OMSI 2009 DaVinci Challenge.

Each winner was presented with a Family Membership to the museum, and occasion to bring 100 students to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) for a day for free. The team was also given the opportunity to spend one night at the museum after hours.

The project, funded by the Lemelson Foundation, called for students to take on any idea of Leonardo DaVinci's hundreds of scientific and engineering concepts and adapt it to one of their own.

OMSI solicited proposals from eight youth teams (three middle school and five high school teams) and eight adult teams, for a total of 16 teams. The Sisters Outlaws team was in the youth division, and competed against the seven other middle school and high school teams.

Science teacher Rob Jensen informed his students of the challenge last February 19. The next day, six Sisters Middle School science students (including 11-year-old Adam Novotny, not pictured) got their heads together as a team during school lunch period, and decided they wanted to take on DaVinci's idea of a battle tank.

Why a tank? Elizabeth Stewart put it this way: "We chose the DaVinci tank project because we thought figuring out how to build it would be fun and challenging."

That turned out to be both an understatement and a prophecy.

Alex Cyrus immediately set to work putting a Power-Point show together on DaVinci's masterpieces, presented it to the team, and ideas began popping how they could best apply themselves to building a tank. Why a round tank? Emily Christen had that nailed down perfectly: "A round tank would be hard to hurt, projectiles would just ricochet off the curved surface."

After further discussion, the students settled on a livestock feeding tub for the tank's base, and with the help of the team's taxi driver and bookkeeper, Debra Vogt, they went to Big R in Redmond to purchase their tank's beginning.

Then the question of how to make it move came up.

At first, the idea of two students riding unicycles to power the tank was floated. Handlebars bolted to the roof of the tank would keep the driver's upright.

"It would have been difficult to make turns," Langley Vogt said.

Unicycles were out.

"How about the two-man Rhoades Car Bicycle that I saw in a recent Popular Science magazine?" Adam Novotny suggested.

Emily Christen jumped on it and soon the team was hot on the idea of the four-wheel bicycle. Two insurmountable factors removed that idea from the picture: cost of the vehicle, and only the prototype was available.

Back to the drawing board...

By March 9 the team's tank was taking shape in the Vogt garage. Emily's dad, John Christen, helped out with the cutting of the plywood turret-support and driver's area - not with his ideas - but under direction and supervision of the students.

"I'll do the sawing," he said, "You guys do the planning and tell me what to do."

After discussing and discarding the idea of using a huge student-powered tricycle for power, the team hit on the idea of a mountain bike, and Ponderosa Forge in Sisters helped make that idea work by cutting a hole in the bottom of the tub. Wess Mace of Cascade Meadow Ranch donated his time to make a final, last-minute adjustment in the opening to allow for a larger set of wheels.

Zach Enneberg was chosen to be the driver and, with the addition of massive training wheels to keep Zach in the seat and the bike on the level, the propulsion problem was solved.

Elizabeth Stewart next found inexpensive caster wheels at The Home Depot to support the outer surface of the tub, and the project was soon rolling along smoothly.

On March 11, the round, white-with-black-spots, Sisters Outlaws Youth Tank - nicknamed "The Cow" - began to look like it was going to work. The team thought an overturned Dogloo would work for a turret, but that was dropped because of cost, and they settled for patio pond-liner instead.

Next came the refinements. The team found a battery-powered bubble machine on the Internet for $8 that wafted soap bubbles out the "exhaust pipe." Then a 1/2-inch PVC plastic pipe "cannon" was installed in the front of the turret.

Enneberg used that creation to shoot marshmallows at the spectators when the tank was rolling through the five-minute demonstration routine. (It is rumored that he made a direct hit on one of the judges.)

Three cosmetic additions were installed to complete the tank: One was a child's stuffed cow tucked into a hole in the rear of the turret with just the back-end sticking out. Another were the two Sisters Outlaws banners mounted to the top of the turret, and the piéce de résistance was a tape recorder playing like-real cow sounds made by Langley's dad, Rick Vogt.

One of the big reasons the team from Mr. Jensen's class won the 2009 DaVinci Challenge is because it was a "kid's project," not a "parent's project." When it came time for the judges' evaluation, the students had their notebooks and journals open and were prepared to answer all questions.

The judges were particularly impressed by the team's documentation of the design, research, and build process, which was evidenced in their Project Notebook, Tri-fold, and a PowerPoint presentation. They were also impressed by the team's oral presentation, during which each team member explained a particular aspect of the project.

After the judge's decision, the students pulled a fast one on Mr. Jensen, who hadn't heard they won the DaVinci Challenge. When he went to see how they had done, and spotted the students sitting quietly, heads down and shoulder's slumped in a posture of defeat, he said to his wife Stephanie, "Oh, oh, this doesn't look good...". Then, just as he started to say, "I'm really proud of you guys..." they leaped to their feet and almost crushed him, shouting, "WE WON! WE WON!"