Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

To continue where I left off yesterday, what finally convinced me to give a special project is seeing what the students had submitted to Maila’s geometry and calculus classes (I’m not sure which; I doubt it would be both, because the grading of those would be complicated, I suppose) for the science circus the EVP wants. I don’t know if it will also be used for the science summer camp for the high school students.

My cousin and his group mates made the standard traverse a loop across a twisted wire without touching or a loud buzzer will sound.

There was a tray full of sawdust over which kids could compete passing refrigerator magnets that had been stuck at the end of a long paintbrush. They would feel like junior treasure hunters trying to look for thumbtacks, paper clips and other metallic objects under the rubble.

Others submitted an open-ended three-mirror kaleidoscope with no colored confetti at the far end. So it was actually more the view of a giant fly.

A group of girls had made a board studded with Christmas lights in the shape of the twelve Zodiac constellations, that was wired to a panel with buttons and descriptions that would light up the corresponding bunch of stars when pressed. Unfortunately, some of the constellations, such as Scorpius and Leo, were reversed, or shown as they would look from outside the celestial sphere. They should have consulted before finalizing their design.

Yesterday another group submitted a periscope, made from a large shoebox and two tabletop-use rectangular mirrors. I told them using smaller mirrors in a tube at least twice as long would have been better. Again, asking for a go signal from the teacher when they submitted their proposal would have been in order.

The most ill conceived submission I’ve seen: an elevator simulation that used pushpins instead of pulleys, and had to be manually pulled down after the rope had pulled the car up. I wouldn’t be surprised if Maila gives that the lowest grade.

With some of those small billiard balls from key chains, some students have made that swinging pendulum where only the balls at the end move. They were sufficiently aligned to work near flawlessly too.

There’s at least one submission whose purpose I haven’t discerned (there’s a pulley involved – that’s all I know), including a paper volcano with an empty crater as deep as a water glass. Is it actually a simulation? Will the sides of the volcano hold and not dissolve when the chemical reactants spill from the mouth? Why is there no catch basin “moat” around the base?

But the most ambitious I’ve seen so far is an inflatable kiddie wading pool with a T-shaped mast in the middle (made of plumber’s tubing) that has two pulleys on the ends. They also have two hula-hoops and rope. If I’m not mistaken this is for making giant soap bubbles that can enclose a human, much like what’s in the Science Centrum, although I have no idea when they’ll put it into action.

What’s my point? I had to see it to believe it, but apparently these students can pull off projects that don’t aren’t a shame to display. Too bad I didn’t see how the engineering students performed in the exhibit in Los Baños last term, or I would have realized it sooner.