Cascade View students enjoy fun-filled night
April 2, 2009
By Laura Geggel
More than just baking-soda-and-vinegar volcanoes erupted at the Cascade View Elementary Science, Arts and Spelling Night March 27.
Sponges shot out of plastic tubes, students ate cookies soaked in dry ice and parents clapped as students showcased their science projects in the school’s gymnasium.
Student art adorned the walls and tables. In the room next door, students in grades second through fifth spelled words before a panel of three judges.
The night was awash with students showing off their science and spelling skills. Third-graders Devon Player, Claire Meyer and Katie Webster created a presentation demonstrating how an airplane flies. Player researched the pitch, yaw and roll of an airplane and explained how the pilot manages all three with the elevator on the plane’s tail, ailerons flaps on the wings, and rudder.
Mitchell Saunders (left), Tyler Cleveland and Steven Watters watch as a volcano erupts at the Cascade View Elementary Science, Arts and Spelling Night.
Across the room, parent Terry Losansky showed how to boil water in a cold tub. Before a crowd of excited elementary-school students, Losansky boiled a flask of water over an open flame. Letting it cool for a minute, he then immersed the airtight flask in a container of cold water.
When molecules get cold, they condense.
“The air is huddling together, but the space isn’t getting smaller,” Losansky said. “So it creates a vacuum.”
The drop in pressure allowed the water to boil at a lower temperature.
Losansky explained how water boils at lower temperatures in environments with lower pressures.
“If you ever want to go to the top of Mount Everest, you’ll be flat out of luck. You’ll only get warm soup,” he joked.
His third-grade daughter, Kaitlin, helped him perform the experiment.
“My goal is if I can get one kid to say, ‘ooo, science is cool,’ my job is done,” Losansky said.
Every five minutes, the science revelers were interrupted by a loud bang. That sound came from a sponge cannon crafted by Mount Si High School physics student senior Andrew Klausing and senior Matthew Lynne.
The duo sprayed paint thinner into an open-ended plastic tube, before shoving sponges down the tube’s throat. They zapped the other end of the tube with electricity, causing a spark between two screws in the tube’s mouth. With the help of the paint thinner, the spark warmed up the air in the tube, causing the air to expand and the sponges to shoot up into the air and down into the hands of awaiting children.
Meanwhile, third grader Sarah Troy showed her project, “The Naked Egg,” to onlookers probing an egg in a Tupperware full of vinegar.
“I think it’s incredible,” said Richelle Rose, the mother of a third-grader. “It’s amazing what kids can create, question and do.”
But the night was not over after students finished presenting their science and art projects. As soon as the clock hit 7 p.m., Cascade View Elementary’s spellers took to the stage. Competition was fierce, with the third-grade competition lasting more than 20 minutes as Sam Wilson and Zoe Cornell went back and forth.
Each student spelled well, but only one winner could emerge from each grade. The winners are as follows: second-grader Ryan Horn, third-grader Zoe Cornell, fourth-grader Steven Watters and fifth-grader Allyson Conlon.
“It feels like I just won a race car race,” Horn said. “It feels really good. I can’t wait to tell everyone.”
Students participating were given a list of words collected from a variety of sources. Each participant received a $10 gift card to Barnes & Noble from the Literary Ladies of Snoqualmie Ridge. The winners received a medal and a free lunch with Principal Tim Nootenboom.
“We practiced all of the words two times,” said Cornell, who also won last year. “I was kind of nervous, but I knew the second graders did it so I could do it.”
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wooo go andrew