Science Expo Offers a Day of Discovery

Toothpicks, sugar, formaldehyde and curiosity.

This is the stuff of which science was made Wednesday at Moorpark College’s daylong Science Expo ’96.

With exotic electronics and common kitchen ingredients, students from all over Ventura County studied why the world around them rots, explodes, burns, crumples, endures and zooms through space at the speed of light.

Janine Taylor yanked her three sons out of school in Simi Valley to bring them to the fair.

“I knew they’d be able to see a lot of wonderful exhibits,” said Taylor, flanked by Chris, 14, Zach, 12, and Cole, 10. “I want [my] sons to become scientists.”

Cole was buzzing with leftover excitement from what he had just seen.

Moorpark College chemistry professor Woodrow Elias had demonstrated the kind of flaming, sparking, smoking reactions that take place when oxidizing chemicals are mixed with reducing chemicals.

The last of these--a blazing yellow flash of a thermite reaction that spat a glowing stream of molten iron into a bucket and turned sand to glass--was so cool that Cole rushed up to the lab table afterward.

“Thank you for the demonstration,” he sighed.

Then, “We’re about to go see the cadaver!” he chirped. And off they went, to where students surrounded the body of a woman in her late 50s who had donated her remains to science.

It was a day of discovery.

Model rockets whizzed up from the green.

College students tinkered with engineering experiments and tweaked computers, surfing the Internet.

One Moorpark College instructor cruised around campus on an electrically motorized bicycle, cheerfully beeping the horn.

Everywhere on campus, students of all ages hovered over experiments and demonstrations.

They oohed and aahed as the violent reaction of bromine and aluminum boiled out of a glass beaker in a swirl of red flame and smoke.

They knit their brows over complex math problems.

And students like Jerit Wendlandt bit their lips and sweated through a physics contest.

The rules were simple: Using no more than a box of flat toothpicks and a bottle of wood glue, build an oil derrick-like tower at least 25 centimeters high and 100 centimeters square at the base.

Then pile weight onto it until it collapses.

Wendlandt had already stacked 68 kilograms of lead lab weights onto a chain that ran up through a hole in the lab table and hung on the crown of his toothpick creation.

He added two more kilograms. Then two more. Then two more.

Sweat broke out all over his face. His ears turned bright red. He kept stacking. Clank. Clank. Clank. The chain was full. Now he stacked weights onto a steel plate hanging from the chain. Eighty kilograms. Then 100.

Wendlandt donned plastic safety glasses as his tower bowed under the pressure. And he kept stacking.

When he reached under the demonstration stand for the last container of weights, he bumped the stand.

The derrick of handcrafted toothpick I-beams he had spent 12 hours building over spring break collapsed with a hideous crunch, spilling the weights onto the ground in a clanging heap.

Lab assistants hunched over calculators quickly declared him the highest scorer.

His derrick, weighing barely a tenth of a pound, had supported more than 255 pounds, making him the first-place winner of a $100 prize.

And Wendlandt--a 20-year-old Simi Valley engineering student bound for Cal Poly next year--smiled.

“That was pretty exciting,” he said.

“I’m surprised it held up with the jarring and the bouncing.”