THOUSAND OAKS : Teamwork Is Crucial at This Science Fair

Crowding around a five-foot pyramid of plastic straws, straight pins and red clay, 8-year-old Joseph Jing and his teammates argued about how to make their “straw scraper” stand taller without tipping over.

“We need support! We need support!” shouted Joseph, as the needlelike structure wobbled to one side.

For the third-graders at Ladera School in Thousand Oaks, the race to build the tallest tower was just one of a dozen events in Thursday’s daylong Science Olympiad.

Modeled after a similar program in Simi Valley, the Olympiad is designed as a carnival-like alternative to the traditional science fair. Rather than conducting experiments independently, the youngsters competing in the Olympiad must work together to solve problems.

In addition to building free-standing straw towers, students built a cardboard roller coaster for marbles, designed a car propelled by wind and fashioned a boat from aluminum foil.

And although the activities seemed more fun than academic, Ladera teacher Teresa Coffman said each one demonstrates a scientific principle or fact.

“A lot of people think that science is very dry and very boring,” she said. “With this, students are solving problems the way engineers and people who use science in the real world would.

“This makes the kids scientists,” Coffman added. While the straw towers taught the students engineering principles, the Naked Egg Drop taught the students about gravity and mass.

From weeks of experiments with their groups at home, each team developed a “landing pad” intended to cushion an egg dropped from a height of up to 30 feet.

Materials for the pads ranged from cut-apart mattresses to sponges and a mound of cooked white rice.

For sixth-grader Kari Green and her teammates, the secret to success was a gooey mixture of spaghetti, red Jell-O and Malt-O-Meal, all stuffed inside a slashed-open pillow.

Despite overnight hardening of the Malt-O-Meal, the home-brew successfully cushioned an egg dropped from a 30-foot platform.

“It doesn’t matter how high (the cushion) is, just how durable,” said egg drop contestant Jill Skinner.