Somerville Mathematics: Scrapheap Showdown: "Ready, Aim, Flier!"

On October 19th, 19 high school students on six teams gathered in the Breed Memorial Hall at Tufts University to compete in the Somerville Math Fund’s 19th annual Scrapheap Showdown, “Ready, Aim. Flier”. Our first Scrapheap Showdown was actually 21 years ago in 2005 — we had a hiatus due to COVID. In the spring of 2005, a group of Somerville High School students came to a meeting to brainstorm ideas for a fun fundraiser to replace a walk around a lake that was ending. They suggested we do a junkyards war like they watched on TV. I couldn’t imagine sending students into any of the many junkyards nears Union Square then, so instead we created our own Scrapheap pile.

This year’s problem was to build a catapult. There were three challenges that would hurl a marble inside a balloon (for breaks on rolling) and also a pingpong ball in three different events for distance and accuracy. The first challenge was distance across the event room floor. The second was aiming at empty seltzer bottles lined up on the floor. The third was all teams together aiming pingpong balls into a wading pool. The final event was the two winning teams aiming at a bullseye on the other team’s table.

The usual pile of interesting “junk” was in the scrapheap in the middle of the room. They built and tested their catapults on bases so they could move them around for the competitions.

The students worked for three hours and then it was time to test their catapults.

The scoring was keeping track of points or distance and then teams who were first got 1, 2nd got 2, and so forth with the lowest score at the end of the day winning.

The first challenge was The Range War: distance. Each team had three marbles in balloons. Each team had their own color. So each team would shoot for distance all three, and then pick up the two closest ones and leave the furthest on the floor. After all 6 teams went it was easy to see who was 1st, 2nd, 3rd, all the way to 6th and points were assigned: 1 for 1st, 2 for 2nd, etc.

The second challenge was The Knockout: each team was aiming marbles in balloons at soda water bottles, 10 feet away. There was a little bit of water in the bottom, so bottles were hit but not knocked over. They had all the marbles from all the teams and were trying to shoot at the bottles as many marbles as they could in 1 minute.

The third challenge was The Accuracy Duel: all the teams moved their tables in a big circle around a child’s wading pool and they were each shooting their 10 ping pong balls at the target. There was a bonus if you got your ball not only into the pool but in the bucket in the middle.

After the points were all totaled and the two top scorers were identified, The Power Puff Girls and Sleeze, then there was a final round: High Noon.

The first two teams were facing each other with a paper bulls eyed pasted on the table under the catapults. The 2nd place team chose the distance, the 1st place team fired one shot, and hit the target! Since the first place team hit the other one on the first shot, no need to move the tables one foot closer together, and that round was over.

The first place team had won the first and second events and was 4th in the third. The second place team was first in the 3rd event, and 2nd in the first and 4th in the second. The third place team came in 4th, then 2nd and 3rd. The fourth place team came in 6th, 3rd, and 2nd

First place was “Power Puff Girls” (Hannah Baxter, Evelyn Mertl Kime, Gina Chagnon)

Second place was “Sleeze” (Yuvraj Rattan, Gaurav Hastir, Zaib Khan)

Third Place was “The No Name Team” (Casper Newbury, Annabelle Foster, Isa Donovan-DeKlerk)

Fourth Place was “Pythagorean Theorem” (Anya Rajbanshi, Nimra Sheikh, Margaret Dew)

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, and gift cards donated by Charlie’s Kitchen in Harvard Sq. and Dragon Pizza in Davis Sq, and along with Target cards from an anonymous donor.

The other participating teams were “Led Dice” (Sanskar Acharya, Sushant Sharma)

and “2 1/2 Robotics Kids” (Jacob Soltysiak, Sage Milbury, Silas Wickenden)

and “134/2 Calculator Crusaders 134/2” (Keshav Bhargo, Raghav Kaushal).

Designers and refiners of the challenge were members of the Somerville Math Fund Board: Fred Bernardin, Sanford Bogage, Adam Foster, Richard Graf, Monica Fernandes, Jay Landers, Dan Oshima, Erica Voolich, Susan Weiss. Amy Weiss designed the teeshirt and Monica designed the sponsor flyer; and Susan and Sanford designed the student recruiting and registration materials, and Sanford managed registration for this event. For general pictures from the event check out this link.

Michael Morgan (Math Team) 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 we look forward to 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 event space for a Sunday event. This was our 19th 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 earlier years. We offered different levels of sponsorship for the event.

Thanks to all of our wonderful donors whose donations will make first years of three of our renewable scholarships available next spring and four teacher grants in January.

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

Silver Level (one teacher grant): Jay & Jasper, Mr. & Mrs. Donald F. McGoldrick, Julie Schneider, and the Winter Hill Bank.

Bronze Level (supporting Somerville Math Fund work): 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. This is our 25th year! On January 7th, we will be processing teacher grant applications for up to $500 for math classroom materials. In March, we will be processing scholarship applications for our renewable $1500/year math and science scholarships. 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 to this post is https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2025/10/scrapheap-showdown-ready-aim-flier.html