Hercules High School, along with the rest of the CSU East Bay region, made their presence known at the regional MESA competition at UC Davis on April 30, 2016.
The annual MESA (Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement) event is a science fair-like competition where middle and high school students compete with other schools. Students answer one of the multiple project prompts that show off designing ingenuity, presentation skills, and creativity.
According to MESA’s website, they provide “educationally and economically disadvantaged students with the skills and resources to be successful in school and career in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines.”
Before winning awards for projects, the East Bay region (including Hercules, Pinole, and De Anza high schools among others) won the spirit competition, a short event held before the awards ceremony, where regions showed off their spirit by chanting or screaming. Spectators did not need to pay attention to have noticed that East Bay’s voice bullhorned over UC Davis’/Sac State’s, San Jose State’s, Ukiah State’s, Chico State’s, the University of the Pacific’s, Sonoma State’s, and RISE’s.
When it comes to the actual awards that CSU East Bay placed in, many were won by HHS.
Ryan Cutter, Marc Pugeda, DiAngelo Soriano, and James Spilman (2nd place) and Anubhav Chanan, Jahnvi Doshi, Ernestina Hsieh, and Bartell Lin (3rd place) participated in the prosthetic arm category. Competitors had to make and program a robotic prosthesis and test their arm in three categories: object relocation, distance and accuracy, and dexterity.
The third place winning arm consisted of kitchen tongs programmed to shut close by the press of a button. For the dexterity test, which consisted of screwing in three different sized nuts and bolts into wood, Jahnvi Doshi used the arms’ rotating pulley (which enabled the arm to open and close by pulling on a string) to screw in the nut. She also put a small towel over the operating button to be able to press on it with her teeth for more control.
Doshi finished the task in the allotted time with the button still in her mouth and ran to hug partner Hsieh, while mumbling screams of glee.
“I think the thing we struggled in the most, we did the best in,” team member Anubhav Chanan said. “The greatest moment for me was seeing that last screw go in.”
In balsa wood gliders, Titan Anurag Chanan won the second place medal in the 11th and 12th grade division. This project required participants to make a small airplane travel as far as possible with just the winding of a propeller and a projected throw.
Chanan’s plane consisted of 15 cm wings that extended parallel to the ground and were perpendicular to the rest of the wing at its ends. His plane’s bassal wood skeleton was covered in orange tissue paper.
At the time of the first trial, Chanan nervously tried to concentrate on his throw while those around him played with paper airplanes or sat down with blank minds. Chanan finally wound up the propeller and threw the plane, but before long, it glided into the sitting area. His second trial was more successful and won him the silver medal.
Another winner is senior Joyce Lin, who won first place in Creativity and Engineering Design for mousetrap cars. This project calls for making miniature cars (powered by the snap of a mousetrap) that must travel as far as possible up a ramp.
Lin’s contraption was made of wooden wheels and a straw connected to a string, proving the worth of her ingenuity that won her the creativity title.
Lin’s car traveled a substantial but inadequate amount of feet up the ramp when compared to other cars. But as a former first place winner of last year’s mousetrap category, Lin left her last MESA event with a positive mindset.
“This year had much comradery” Lin said regarding MESA’s atmosphere this year. “People were very friendly and not super competitive.”
As for the remaining Titan winners, Nicholas Wu placed in third for the 9th grade Solo Math competition. Jhanvi Doshi won second place for the 10th grade division and Max Lin took the silver in the 11th grade division.
For Speak Out, a project where students got to choose a topic and make a presentation to a panel of judges, the group of Ryan Marivel, Lauren Yen, and Emma Bruce got a spot in the second place tier for the 9th and 10th grade division. Chiamaka Nwadike, Shanti Shrestha, and Thao Le Hoang placed in third for the 11th and 12th grade division.
“We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare with SBAC and AP testing,” MESA adviso, Maricris Cruzat said. “Our students still did their best.”
The MESA event was a day filled with enthusiasm, DJ music, and even the occasional group breaking out into the Running Man dance. Congratulations to all Titans who put Hercules on the map of academics and creativity again.