Parents' Corner
by
Johnny Jones When Lester Leaton, SEMO Regional Science Fair Director, told us, "The judges at International will disqualify a project if it's a half-inch over and throw it out," we decided to remeasure Bryan's display boards.
They were a quarter inch over the regulation 48 inches. Rather than take a chance, we decided to shorten the display by taking the hinges off. When they were off, the fabric on the boards had to be replaced.
So I was spending my days ironing fabric and stapling it, and my evenings redoing the posters that had accidentally been deleted from our hard disk. Bryan was trying to perfect the turns his tank made, with Chip taking measurements on the floor while Bryan ran the system from the computer. But by Saturday night, May 5, 1990 the project was ready to be packed. Bryan was still working on the computer display and the tank when the project started acting funny.
"It works only when it's really near the computer," he said. But he was out of time for trouble-shooting. Sunday morning at ten everything went into a box, and he left at noon.
Bryan set up in Tulsa Monday, and got the tank to behave, although erratically. Then somehow, in the midst of all the confusion, his roommate stepped on it. Since he was particular about how the tank could be held and set down, I knew it would be a problem. One of the chaperons said she almost had a heart attack - but Bryan thought he could fix it with another sensor.
On Tuesday he got it working
-- but not working well. But it wouldn't budge Wednesday, when the more than twenty PhD judges looked at his project. Later he found it was a bad op amp chip. His inability to show his tank in action hurt him. But the NASA judge sympathized - "That's just how it is with the space shuttle. Everything works, then something goes wrong."
When we drove in Thursday, we didn't know what to expect.
After the first hour at the awards ceremony Thursday evening I was tired of clapping. But my interest piqued when the IEEE presented Bryan with their Second Award of $l00. Their First Award was also for a robotics project.
One of the old hands told us, "If you get anything at all your first time here, you're doing very well." Lester told someone, "When they announced that award, I don't know who was more excited - Bryan, his mother, or me." Because l986 was the last year a SEMO winner received recognition at the ISEF.
Friday morning was the next awards ceremony - Federal and Industrial Awards. On stage were some heavy hitters. The chief of Naval Research, a Rear Admiral, presented the Navy Awards. A Commanding General of the Army said to the finalists, "You're one dynamite group of students."
The Puerto Rican delegation marched in together, and when one of their number received an award, they waved their flags. Minnesotans were big flag-wavers, too. They saved a block of seats for themselves in the audience, and went crazy when someone won. South Carolina had noise- makers, and Floridians a cheer. When one of them won, they would all yell, "Flor-i-DA."
Without flags, the least we could do was stand and applaud when Bryan won an trip courtesy of NASA.
So we were hoping for an award Friday night at the final ceremony. Spotlights marched the recipients up the aisle to the stage; after the awards were presented for each category, the announcer would say, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the 3rd award winners for l990" - and the organist would play, the spotlights would criss-cross the students, and everyone would stand and cheer and wave flags and make noise and generally go crazy. As the kids would say, it was awesome.
Bryan was not to receive a Grand Award. Not this year. But we weren't bored. It was too much fun to see the Floridians start to count how many of their number got awards in each category. By the end of the evening, they were standing on the upholstered chairs to cheer. And the Puerto Ricans were hugging and crying. One mother out in the audience squealed when her son won - and everyone laughed.
The kids I talked to who won nothing at all said the same thing -- "But I got to be here." We were happy Bryan put Viburnum on the map there - when he walked up the aisle to that stage, it was after someone announced, "Bryan Jones, from Iron County C-4 Schools, Viburnum, Missouri." That was along with schools like Bronx Academy of Science, Mayo High School in Rochester Minnesota, and Chuo Agricultural High School in Japan.
I was amazed at what a big and impressive category engineering was. The Canadian down the aisle from Bryan had his patent number at the top of his project.
The ISEF was awe-inspiring. It was rare when Amy and I could understand more than a sentence or two of the kids' explanation of their project. But the students we met were not only smart and hard-working; they were fun.
The kids traded hat pins as a mixer, and the galena pins Bryan took went very well. He has pins of a grizzly from Alaska, a shamrock from Northern Ireland, and cowboy boots from Amarillo - about fifty in all. I think everyone there who had another year of high school thought what Bryan said: "I can't wait 'til next year." Neither can we.
