Group effort: Here’s how these science-loving kids in LS, Olathe finished in top 20

A chance to create a new exhibit for Science City was the big prize at stake in the Burns & McDonnell Battle of the Brains competition. The contest engaged more than 6,800 students across the metro, who flooded judges with their designs.

Both Olathe East and Lee’s Summit West high schools brought ideas to the table that garnered them a top 20 finish and a $2,500 prize for their schools. Ten teams in the kindergarten through sixth-grade division and 10 in the seventh- through 12th-grade division made up the top 20 teams.

Thirteen other finalists also won $2,500, including Prairie Star and Timber Creek Elementary and Oxford Middle in Blue Valley, as well as De Soto High School. The top five finalists received larger prizes at a Jan. 23 ceremony, with the $50,000 top prize and exhibit-designing rights going to Delta Woods Middle School in Blue Springs.

To compete in the contest, students had to choose a science-related topic and come up with six to eight possible interactive activity stations that related to it. That plan had to include not only ideas for what to put in the exhibit but also a budget and safety protocols.

“Just to have that opportunity to be hands-on and do something with potential real, positive effects on our community within our school and in the greater Kansas City community — I thought it was really great,” said Gavin Wood, science teacher at Lee’s Summit West.

For his team, the focal point was engineering with air. Student McKinley Robb, 17, designed a bubble table, while teammate Sebastian Dorrel, 16, dreamed up a rocket assembly and launch station.

“I love fabricating and putting together different things and seeing how they change the experiment with different variables. I want to be an engineer that gets to work on rocket ships when I grow up,” Sebastian said.

Many of the students used the opportunity to develop or expand skills for a potential career path.

“I want to go into visual media and 3-D design and animation with my career, and I really learned a lot from making the 3-D model and compositing everything together: how to convert files and to make the colors and how to model elements in detail,” said Ethan Wood, 16.

Olathe East took a different route from Lee’s Summit West, focusing on all kinds of waves, from seismic to sound. Their ideas included a surfing simulator and an echolocation cave.

“It was really fun putting yourself in a little kid’s shoes and imagining what would be the coolest thing to see at a science exhibit,” said Zack Humrichouse, 18.

The team brainstormed about the different kinds of waves and how they make an impact on people’s everyday lives.

“We were like, ‘What do UV rays do?’ and so then we started to think about what things we can do to harness those. So our exhibit for that was using sunscreen as a drawing tool and then using it on paper and sticking it under a UV light. It shows the power of sunscreen and how UV light is reflected off that,” said Dylan Gilbo, 17.

Project management was a real challenge, with the team’s students spread across multiple classes. Dylan analyzed his team members’ strengths and tried to place them where they could be successful.

“I wanted to make sure that stuff got done. I wanted to make sure that whatever we produced was the highest quality. I definitely tried to play to everyone’s strengths,” Dylan said.

Erin Powell, a teacher Olathe East, said her students took a deep dive into material they wouldn’t learn about in their regular classes, while also gaining other skills.

“I think it does an amazing job at teaching them how to work together as a group to reach an end goal,” Powell said. “I also think it gives them an opportunity to do something that they can be excited and passionate about that’s outside of what would be in a general ed classroom.”