My brief stint as a pyromaniac began when I dropped a pint of marbles into a bucket and it ended a minute later, when an LED light blinked to life. Seem unrelated? Like any good domino effect, there’s more to the story.
As the marbles dropped, the bucket swung, yanking a string and pulley system up to connect two iron plates together. Sparks sizzled between the two as a circuit was completed and ignited a match. This match burnt away a string, releasing baking soda into a glass of vinegar so far, so good. However, my partner and I could only watch in horror as the match’s flame rapidly ignited the wooden pegboard of our project...we had accidentally used masking instead of scotch tape.
This project, ironically titled “Mission Possible”, is a challenge to all the teams of Science Olympiad to build their own notorious, domino effect Rube Goldberg machine. Limited only by the requisite energy transfers and forms (thermal, chemical, mechanical, electric and electromagnetic) and a 60x60x60 centimeter box, I went through dozens of sheets of graph paper attempting to create a series of domino steps (sometimes metaphorical, sometimes literal) that started with a series of dropped marbles and ended with an LED bulb blinking to life. Everything else was fair game.
Our ideas ranged from inflating balloons with some old fashioned baking soda and vinegar (or as I learned to say, “sodium bicarbonate and acetic acid” to emphasize the chemical reaction) to creating a zinc and copper battery to using a toy helicopter motor and a pulley to complete a circuit. I used a newfound understanding of AP Chemistry, my imagination, and a semi-realistic expectation of budget constraints to make the absurd a reality. I worked through many nights filled with rosincore soldering, balsa wood sandpapering, midnight pizza and tested friendships. At 7 AM on a cold March morning, we lugged a wobbly and slightly fragile pegboard box, rattling with various arduino boards, alligator clips, and nails, onto a classic (and unheated) school bus bound for Highline Community College the Science Olympiad Regionals.
Your typical Science Olympiad competition day consists of running back and forth across campus heading to your next event as you casually check the map, sprinting back when you realize you’ve forgotten your goggles, a calculator, your note sheet, or some other important necessity, and if you’re lucky, getting a snack sometime during the day. For some, free time meant adjusting the various pulleys and wires in Mission Possible. For others, double checking their salinometer or reviewing their binder full of notes for Anatomy & Physiology.
My penultimate challenge that day was watching the chaos and aftermath of our Mission Possible project run. Our box silently smoldered, a black soot stain streaked across its otherwise pearly surface. Candle wax and the freshly reacted combination of baking soda and vinegar dripped onto the bottom of the box. Our LED bulb erratically blinked blue, signaling the end of our run. Mission Possible was an impossible game of trial and error, of fifty mechanical energy transfers gone wrong, of unpredictable solar panels and fiber optic cables, of spinning pulleys and clunky weights. All of this was tethered together by a previously inapplicable knowledge of chemistry, physics and code, an abundance of RadioShack switches, circuits, and incandescent bulbs, and especially purple duct tape.
No one ever considers themselves a builder first in Science Olympiad they’ll steer clear of the balsawood towers and the magnetically levitated vehicles, as I used to. Why? You have to start from nothing and create something that’s only existed in your mind as some kind of perfect, flawless construction. But as I’ve learned over the years from imperfectly operating power drills, dodging rosin core solder fumes, and coding responses to temperature sensors, it’s the final product that counts.
That day, I learned the power of redundancy. Despite all the splintering chaos, our somewhat ramshackle project ultimately had enough fail safes and repeated steps to get all the requisite points for energy transfers and complete the final steps. We ended up placing fourth at regionals because I wasn’t afraid of attempting the impossible. Of creating my own blueprints to follow, and when things didn’t go perfectly, revising the blueprint and starting from scratch once more. Of making an idea become reality.