Science camp buoys students’ skill

• By CHANTE DIONNE WARREN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jul 19, 2008 - Page: 5B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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The proof was in the pennies.

The more pennies the middle schoolers’ homemade rafts could hold before sinking, the better the design.

“ … 24 pennies … 55 pennies … 92 pennies,” ExxonMobil mechanical engineer Joel Deal announced as he counted pennies scooped from the rafts that sank to the bottom of a small tub of water.

The students held their breath as Deal counted the pennies for the raft designed by a team called The Reinforcers. Their raft managed to stay afloat under the weight of 105 pennies.

The 48 students at Friday’s science experiment are participants in the ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp at Southern University.

The camp is named after retired NASA astronaut Dr. Bernard A. Harris.

For the raft contest, the students applied a scientific strategy based on Archimedes’ principle of buoyancy and its relationship to density, according to a camp fact sheet.

The winning team used two small sheets of aluminum foil wrapped around four plastic straws shaped into a square, said Brandy Stewart, 11, of Baton Rouge.

“It shows a good design,” Deal said.

Winning team members said their raft gave them a boost of confidence.

The team originally estimated the raft would hold about 23 pennies before sinking. “This taught us to never underestimate ourselves,” said Tiffani Henderson, 14, of Zachary.

Besides science experiments, students attend classes on physics, chemistry, biology, robotics and technology at the two-week camp, which ends Wednesday.

They bunk with roommates in dormitories where they are not allowed to watch television, talk on cell phones, or play video games, said Barbara Foots, national camp director of the Harris Foundation, a cosponsor of the camp.