BRAD HORN/Nevada Appeal 'Lost in Space,' a project by Carson High School senior physics students Natalie Rogers, Janine Stone and Nick Halen, glows in black light at Senators Square Friday morning. The project consists of an orange and green golf ball that shoot through tubes with pulleys, eventually releasing the orange golf ball through a tube that ends at the top of a bell sounding the end of the experiment. In photo orange golf ball is released and the project begins.
In order to create a contraption for the high school's annual Rube Fest, students must rely on their understanding of the laws of physics.
Some also looked for help from the dark side.
Dressed as a pirate, Josh Herrera, 17, drew a crowd to his group's project, Satanic Rube O' Piracy, with a fantastic tale.
He told how pirates had been sailing on the high seas when the British attacked. As the pirates fought for control of their ship, Satan rose from the starboard and offered them magic marbles in return for dark power.
They accepted his help and have since been doomed to use the magic marbles to ring Satan's bell.
After the story, the students demonstrated how a marble set into motion a series of levers and pulleys to finally ring a bell in the end.
"It just makes it more fun," said James Jacoby, 18. "And we get to dress up."
Carson High School physics students crowded Senator Square on Friday with elaborate mechanisms based on the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Reuben Lucius Goldberg.
Goldberg, who died in 1970, was known for the elaborate contraptions in his cartoons, which he described as symbols of man's capacity for exerting maximum effort to accomplish minimal results.
Students had to display proficiency in creating a system using levers, pulleys, free fall, projectiles, planes and circular motion to ring a bell in the end.
"They're incorporating all the things we've learned this year as far as mechanics," said teacher Mark Johnson. "A lot of times, things look really good on paper, but when it comes to making it actually work, it is a higher level."
In addition to displaying their knowledge of physics, it is also a way for students to showcase their interests.
Andrew Abbott, 17, and Cameron Zink, 18, created the "Iron Maiden," a tribute to heavy metal.
"Maiden's the best band ever," Zink reasoned. "It's original."
And they learned more than technical skills.
"It was fun, crazy, pretty much everything," said Mark Sassi, 17, who created the "Green Monster" with Sebastian Musielak, 17. "We butted heads on a lot of things, where I had an idea but he thought something else. We had to find a compromise we both liked. It was a lot of compromise."
Contact Teri Vance at tvance@nevadaappeal.com or at 881-1272.
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