For every participant in Saturday’s Science Olympiad bottle rocket challenge, Mike Guerrero had two important questions.
A big man with a big presence, the Garner Magnet High School health and P.E. teacher smiled at each middle or high school duo as they approached his table perched before the vast green expanse of field next to the College of Textiles.
Eyes hidden behind the dark shades of his grey Ray-Ban sunglasses, his friendly voice boomed out with the confidence befitting a gym teacher.
“Young man, how many pounds would you like?” he asked little Scott Ellis from Moyock Middle School.
Scott was unsure, as was his partner James Labounty. They didn’t realize he was asking about how much he should pressurize the rocket-shaped soda bottle lying a few yards away in the grass.
“Seventy-five? The maximum?” Guerrero specified with a big smile. The boy nodded his head.
“Now, where’s your egg at in this thing?” the man asked.
That was an easy one. Scott explained how his rocket worked and Guerrero nodded his head in understanding.
With those important inquiries answered, Guerrero positioned himself in front of the table and adjusted the contents of one of the two yellow toolboxes sitting on the table. The controls inside pressurized the pipes running from the front and back, the most important of which led to the rocket in the field.
“Timers ready?” Guerrero asked his student volunteers. They answered yes.
Guerrero’s hand hovered over the big red button for a moment in anticipation. Then he mashed it down.
With a succinct hiss, the bottle shot up into the sky until the crowd lining the field lost it in the bright midday sun.
Just as he had for the past 10 years, Guerrero watched the rocket with a smile.
For about three hours Saturday, Guerrero’s nine-person team launched water rockets from middle and high school teams from all over the state. Their creations had to be 300 grams and carry inside one large chicken egg — dubbed the Egg-O-Naut. Judges scored the competitors based on the length of time their rocket stays in the air, and teams receive bonuses for things like an intact occupant and a complete, midair separation.
In a new twist this year, high schools had one hour to construct a complete rocket on site, with only the materials they brought to the competition.
It was just one event in 54 at this year’s Science Olympiad competition.
But you wouldn’t know it from the crowd.
“It’s a great way to spend a few Saturdays a year,” Michelle Lowery, one of the timekeepers and a friend of Guerrero’s, said.
Lowery said she’s been family friends with the Guerreros for a while, and for the fifth year in a row, her and Guerrero’s wife and event scorekeeper Paula have come out to help Mike.
“I swindled them into it,” Mike said with a grin.
And Mike should know — since the infectious fun of this event caught hold of him too. Ten years ago, some of his fellow high school teachers needed some help with the event.
“Since then, those buddies aren’t involved with Science Olympiad anymore and I’m still here,” Mike said.
But Mike’s come a long way. He’s upgraded his equipment, purchasing an “Ultimate Pneumatic Launch Package” from NERDS, Inc. He’s even outfitted this $249 system with a toolbox for easy travel and a better pneumatic line for improved durability.
He’s even spent some time launching rockets at his basement ceiling, much to the chagrin of his wife.
“He likes to play around,” Paula said from her chair behind Mike’s station.
But for students like Michael Dunbar, a senior in middle school education and volunteer, the importance of the competition, and the atmosphere of Science Olympiad itself, went beyond the fun of the event.
“The more I do this the more capable I’ll be,” he said of his future as a teacher.
Dunbar said wherever he ends up teaching science, he wants to start his own Science Olympiad team. It’s this “inquiry-based learning” style that helps students succeed in the classroom.
“A lot of kids say science is their least favorite class,” Dunbar said. He wants to change that.
He doesn’t have long to talk though.
He’s frequently interrupted as the next group steps up to the edge of the field to present their rockets. While he connects their contraption to the launcher, his wife Jennifer, a senior in accounting, is busy checking the earthbound eggs for signs of cracks.
Her responsibility is twofold, since she must break every egg on the ground before she retreats to the safety of the brickyard.
“It’s like a minefield out here,” she said as she dodged the remnants of her handiwork.
Mike readies to fire another rocket. He ensures that the competitors have their safety goggles on before every launch — despite the obvious lack of such equipment among his casually dressed staff.
Hiss.
This one comes down hard and Jennifer reports this Egg-O-Naut didn’t make the return journey.
Mike has a technical term for that.
“This egg is scrambled,” he said.
He also had a technical term for when a parachute drifted its occupant into nearby foliage.
“That would be ‘egg in a tree,'” Mike said with certainty. “We’ll check the integrity later.”
That’s how it continued all afternoon — with lots of “good jobs” and applause from the crowd. Even the students who weren’t so successful got notice. For each of them, Mike had the same two questions and the same friendly smile.
Just like this year, the rules of the bottle rocket contest in the coming years will probably change. They’ll get more challenging. New students will compete and adapt. Some will even master the technique.
But Mike will probably still be here. And according to junior in textile and biomedical engineering Rachel Neubert, who competed in the event in her high school, something else will too.
“The rules change,” she said. “The spirit of Science Olympiad is the same.”