CONGRATS
You’ll have to be a really long-term reader of HE&OS in order to recognize original DHEAyankees member Carole, who passed along this bit of good news about DE HEKs:
The Tri-State Home School Science Olympiad team headed out to Indiana this past week to compete at the national level, the actual competition being held on Saturday, May 20. The team will be bringing home medals for two events: Storming the Castle and Mission Possible.
In Storming the Castle, students built a small trebuchet, a form of medieval seige equipment, that could fit within an area 1 meter square to propel a projectile such as a small ball some distance and hit a target. In previous years, hacky sacks have been used. This year a racket ball was the projectile. TSHS placed first in this event, a gold medal, for a 27 meter throw and two 28 meter throws.
Mission Possible required students to build a Rube Goldberg-type contraption to perform some specified task, utilizing the six simple machines—lever, pulley, screw, gear, inclined plane, and wheel and axle. This year, students had to drop a tennis ball onto a first class lever and make use of at least sixteen other simple machines before their contraption performed the final operation which was to unravel a roll of toilet paper from between twenty-five to thirty-five centimeters. There was also a mandatory time restriction which was announced shortly before students dropped their tennis ball. Students were allowed a brief interval so any necessary adjustments could be made. TSHS received a fifth place medal for this event.
Tri-state was the large support group we were in. Way to go, kids!