Video of 2024 Scrapheap Showdown: Catch My Drift!

 Check out the last post for the details of the Scrapheap Showdown. 2024.

Here is the video produced by Somerville EdTV, Joseph Constantine and videoed by Bill Trudell.

Scrapheap Showdown: Catch My Drift

by Erica Dakin Voolich

On October 20, 17 high school students on six teams gathered in the Breed Memorial Hall at Tufts University to compete in the Somerville Math Fund’s 18th annual Scrapheap Showdown, Catch My Drift.

The students had the challenge to build a wind powdered craft to sail across the floor.  When they arrived the wind tunnel was built with seven 8ft  banquet tables, two end to end on each side and 3 across the top at the narrowed backend was a powerful fan.  They needed to build a wind craft to put into the tunnel and when the fan turned on the craft needed to travel at least across the finish line made from tape on the floor 16 feet from the fan. There were bonus points  if their craft was able to go beyond the finish line at the end of the tables to other floor markers.

The usual pile of interesting “junk” was in the scrapheap in the middle of the room with some extra stuff to possible choose for wheels.  They built and tested bases and tested out whether they rolled easily before building sails — all out of a variety of materials.  

The students worked for two and a half hours and then it was time to test their crafts against each other using the wind tunnel. The first round was without any weight and successive rounds carried rolls of pennies, first 1 and then 3, 6, 8, 10 and finally 11 rolls.  The first time a team didn’t reach the finish line, they were given a chance in the next round to continue with more weight before being eliminated.  

We started with six teams and four survived the first two rounds of competition. Two teams got bonus points for going well beyond the finish line in the early rounds.  We continued to add weight and there was cheering for each of the crafts and encouragement to get across that finish line in their voyages.  We kept putting more weight on each of the wind crafts. One team, the Highland Hijackers (4th), was eliminated after 8 rolls of pennies.  We were left with 3 teams to decide who came in first, second and third for the prizes.  Ten rolls of pennies, one team, Bob the Builders, crossed the finish line and the other two had their first time not crossing so they could participate in the next round with 11 rolls. With 11 rolls, no team crossed the finish line completely, two almost made it. Bob the Builder was first place almost crossing, Calculus Crusaders was second, almost crossing, and third, not crossing the line was Nacho Average Team. 

First place was “Bob the Builder” (Serena Wong, Bhavroop Kaur and Rafael Ronen). 

Second was Calculus Crusaders - The Return” (Liam Beretsky-Jewell, Darragh Keane and Emmanuel Mateo).  

Third Place was Nacho Average Team (Julian Barney, Chris Montiel and Sebestien Ungár).  

Fourth was “Highland Hijackers” (Ali El-Saus, Nitish, Rayan Afif Chaouch).

The teams chose their prizes in the order they finished.  The prizes donated were three sets of two tickets to the RedSox (donated by Sam Voolich) for a game in April 2025, three $50 gift cards donated by Charlie’s Kitchen, and three $50 gift cards donated by Dragon Pizza.

The other participating teams were Momo Monsters (Ahon Shakir, Pranjal Acharya, Manreet Kaur) 

and “Gatsby Party (Yuvraj Rattan, Zail Khan).

Designers and refiners of the challenge were members of the Somerville Math Fund Board: Fred Bernardin, Sanford Bogage, Adam Foster, Richard Graf, Dan Oshima, Chase Orsello, Jesse Stern, Erica Voolich, Susan Weiss.  Amy Weiss designed the teeshirt and Monica Fernandes designed the sponsor flyer; and Susan and Sanford designed the student recruiting and registration materials, and Sanford managed registration for this event.  Rogers Foam donated foam of various shapes and sizes to our scrapheap.

Michael Morgan and Patricia Murphy-Sheehy (Head of Math Department) at Somerville High helped with suggestions and distribution help of registration materials.  The math teachers at Somerville High School, recruited student teams.  Bill Trudell videoed the event for Somerville Cable EdTV Channel 15.  And here is  the video of the event uploaded to YouTube produced by Joe Constantine by EdTV for Somerville.

Again Tufts University was our wonderful host donating their gym space for a Sunday event.  Last year was our second year back after a three year COVID hiatus. This was our 18th Scrapheap Showdown and Tufts has been our host for all of these events.  

Thanks to our generous sponsors, this activity was both a fund raiser for a scholarship and three teacher grants, provided prizes for the students and allowed the students to participate without paying any registration fee as students did in the past.  We offered different levels of sponsorship for the event.  

Thanks to all of our wonderful donors whose donations will make one scholarship available next spring and three teacher grants in January.

Gold Level (one year of a college scholarship)East Cambridge Savings Bank, Jasper J. Lawson, PhD. & Associates, Julie Schneider, and Tufts University.

Silver Level (one teacher grant)Mr. & Mrs. Donald F. McGoldrick, Winter Hill Bank and a long term anonymous sponsor.

Bronze Level  (supporting Somerville Math Fund work):Charlie’s Kitchen, A Member of the Somerville High School Faculty, Midé Technology Corp, a couple of long term anonymous sponsors, and Sam Voolich.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville.  On January 7th, we will be looking for teacher grant applications; and in April, we will be looking for scholarship applications.   For more information or to volunteer or to make a donation, call 617-666-0666, e-mail mathfund@gmail.com, or go to www.somervillemathematicsfund.org.

The link for this post is https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2024/10/scrapheap-showdown-catch-my-drift.html