Van Nuys Team Wins Science Title : Education: National Science Bowl championship goes to five students from high school’s magnet program.

Drawing on obscure facts and formulas they had culled from academic journals and university textbooks, a team of students from Van Nuys High School’s Science and Math Magnet won first place in the National Science Bowl competition Monday, defeating more than 300 students from 37 states.

The five students knew that the average depth of the ocean, in meters, is 4,000.

They knew that the WAIS program performs automated searches of databases on the Internet.

They knew that in an Atwood’s machine, with a pulley of negligible mass, the acceleration is g/2 when one hanging mass is three times the other.

They knew all that and more.

“I knew we had a shot at it,” said team captain Scott Schneider, 16, a junior who anchored the team with his knowledge of physics and chemistry. “It feels great.”

Before facing Pittsburgh’s Taylor Allderdice High School in the finals, the Van Nuys team members huddled on stage, joined hands and let out a pregame shout.

Designed to psych out opponents, the unscientific tactic apparently worked. Van Nuys won the final game handily, 104 to 58, never falling behind.

“I don’t know what to say,” said a disappointed Eli Lebow, a Harvard-bound high school junior and Pittsburgh team captain. “They knew a lot of the answers, and they buzzed fast.”

For winning the top prize, the Van Nuys students will head to Alaska in July for an all-expenses-paid trip. But it will be no pleasure cruise. The team will live and work alongside scientists in Prudhoe Bay, above the Arctic Circle, and observe firsthand the oil exploration efforts there.

Before reaching the finals, held in the Washington Convention Center before several hundred onlookers, the Van Nuys team rolled over teams from New Mexico, Washington, D.C., Nebraska, Hawaii and Colorado.

“It hasn’t hit me yet,” said a subdued Michael Chu, 17, a senior who is headed to UC Berkeley in the fall. “One day, a few weeks from now, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and go, ‘Whoa, we won the nationals.’ ”

Whoa is right. The questions that were fired their way left even seasoned scientists scratching their heads.

How much does the internal energy of a certain mass of gas change when its pressure is doubled and the temperature is kept constant? Which one of the world’s major food crops is so poisonous that it is grated to a pulp, soaked, fermented, squeezed and roasted before it is eaten? What percentage of the human genome is composed of genes?

(Answers: Does not change, cassava, and 2%)

Said Mae Jemison, a former space shuttle astronaut who was the moderator during the final round: “I’m glad nobody asked me these questions.”

The National Science Bowl, in its fifth year, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and is designed to inspire young students to pursue math and science careers. The competition begins with regional contests, which this year drew more than 8,000 participants from 1,600 high schools.

Fifty-five teams, each consisting of four members and an alternate, were selected to come to Washington for a shot at the top spot.

On the flight to Washington, the team from Van Nuys did not waste a minute. They pored over science journals provided by their adviser, physics teacher Arthur Altshiller, and quizzed each other to keep their minds sharp.

Besides Schneider and Chu, the team included Michael Mazur, 17; Jonathan Kirzner, 17, and Do Joon Ra, 18.

“I knew, with some good luck, that they had the potential to be the best,” Altshiller said. “If anyone is better, I would like to see them.”

Back in Van Nuys, news of the team’s win Monday spread quickly across the 3,000-student campus, where administrators, teachers and students cheered and applauded as memoranda were read in classrooms and during breaks.

Principal Robert Gayle Scharf was the first to be notified in a triumphant call by the team’s coach from his Washington hotel.

“We plan to provide a pretty enthusiastic reception,” Scharf said. An official celebration honoring the winners is scheduled for noon Thursday in the campus quad at 6535 Cedros Ave.

Times staff writer Martha Willman in Los Angeles contributed to this story.