Photo courtesy of Charles Schletzbaum.
Every year students in science teacher Charles Schletzbaum’s physics class have a project for which pairs of students must build a piece structure out of balsa wood. There tends to be two projects so the students can learn and improve upon their next trial.
The project changes each year, and each project has its own goal, Schletzbaum said.
“Some years, it’s whatever weight they hold, but divided by the amount of balsa wood they use to see efficiency,” Schletzbaum said. “So I switch up the project every year to keep everyone on their toes.”
Last year’s project was to build two towers with a bridge stretching across but this year is different, Schletzbaum said.
“This year they’re building multi-part towers where they get bonus weight if they build three towers or four towers instead that add up to eight inches or more,” Schletzbaum said.
Schletzbaum also likes competing in these projects, but sometimes he is too busy, he said Sometimes I’ll beat them badly, and then sometimes I’ll get beat, he said.
His strategy is to make the structure “as thin as possible because the specs have to be a minimum of two inches,” Schletzbaum said. “The thinner it is, more wood is going vertically up to hold it, the wider you make it, the weaker it is. I’m probably also going to go build four little towers to get the 300 pound bonus.”
He got this inspiration from his engineering background during his teenage years, Schletzbaum said.
“I did Odyssey of the Mind in 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, made it to seventh place in the world, junior year in ‘87,” Schletzbaum said. “Because it’s a physics class and it’s an engineering project, it just goes hand in hand. I did it in 2000 in another school and every year ever since.”
I like how the project is different from other classes, junior Utkarsh Kaushik said.
“It’s pretty exciting because it’s something new, and we haven’t really done anything like this,” Kaushik said. “This is more like building than really using math and like applying it. It’s more like creating than just formulas.”
The previous tower wasn’t secure enough and didn’t have much support, Kaushik said.
“So this time, I’m planning to take things slowly, think it through, have a baseline and a whole blueprint ready, and then start building it like a week earlier, so we don’t have to rush anything,” Kaushik said.
Since Mr. Schletzbaum is going to compete, it’s going to be more challenging because he’s done it multiple times, Kaushik said.
“I feel like it’s going to be harder to compete, but with the right structure and the right weight, I’m pretty sure we’ll look good enough,” Kaushik said.
I think the physics project is kind of hard,” junior Caden Atmodjo said. “You need specific requirements to make the bridge strong enough to hold a certain amount of weight,” he said.
“For the previous project, I think I might have put too much glue, too much wood, so it kind of exceeded the limit,” Atmodjo said.
His last bridge held twenty kilograms, so he think it should be able to hold double the weight, around forty kilograms, Atmodjo said.
“I will make the bridge more precise and accurate in terms of the dimensions because I feel like the last tower that I made was crooked and it was not balanced,” Atmodjo said.