Saugus High successful in final science meet of year

SAUGUS – Saugus High School?s Science Club won two out of three events at the final meet of the season for the North Shore Science League. The meet was held earlier this month at Cape Elizabeth High School in Maine.?This was the first time that Saugus? team has won two events at one meet and also the first time Saugus has earned the most points overall at a meet,” said science director Frank Woods. “This performance also moved the team up from 16th place overall in the league to 10th place.”Science teacher coach Jeffrey Fox said around 30 different schools from around Massachusetts get together for monthly science meets, which feature three different events at each meet.?We happened to do really well at the last meet,” he said. “Every meet, the three events are designed by one of the coaches from the different teams.”Logan Nichols, Stephen Leung and Stephen Sheehan won the “water cannon” event after getting the most water into a 1 liter beaker more than six meters away.?Coincidentally I happened to design that event,” said Fox. “We were given a liter of water and had to build a device ahead of time that could get as much of that water into a 1 liter beaker a certain distance away.”Fox said the students built a large syringe-like device made of out PVC pipe. Fox said other teams came up with wildly different concepts for that event.?There was one design that was kind of similar,” he said. Some groups were using pressurized air to push water out of a tube. Some pressurized it themselves using a bicycle pump. One group actually used a chemical reaction with baking soda and vinegar to put pressure on a balloon they had filled with water to push it out.”Fox said the team was able to get just 8.8 milliliters of water into the beaker, which was good enough for first place.?If you can imagine just a stream of water and trying to get it into a 1-liter beaker that?s maybe 6 inches high and 4 inches in diameter,” he said. “It was a pretty small target. When I came up with the event I wasn?t expecting to get so little water in.”David Baumann and Zachary Collins won the “water hodgepodge” event, answering questions about different properties of water, like why can some bugs walk on water, while Amariah Condon finished sixth out of 19 participants in the “water birds” event which involved identifying different water birds from their pictures.?They had a little slide show and had about a minute to look at each picture and write down what bird they though it was,” said Fox. “The meet ended up being a water-themed event.”The meet in Maine was the last for the year, and the team and the students won certificates for efforts.?It was a good event,” said Fox. “We?ve never had one up in Maine before. The coach up in Maine ? it?s weird he?s in the North Shore Science League, but he used to teach in Saugus and wanted to stay in the league. So we figured we?d make something different and drive up to Maine.”Matt Tempesta can be reached at [email protected].