Stephanie Lewis is young for a state champ. Lewis, who will be a junior
next year at Savannah Country Day School, is one member of a winning Odyssey
of the Mind team that placed second at state and will go on to compete at
the world championships the last week in May along with her fellow team
members Greg Howe, Carol Young, Robert Schuster, Adeline Sprague, Jackie
Sojico and Jennifer Downs.
Odyssey of the Mind is a competition that requires students to
combine science with theater and word games in innovative solutions to
specific challenges. Long-term problems are solved over weeks and months
during the academic year. The Georgia State Finals of the competition were
held this past weekend at Milledgeville State College, with over 100 teams
participating. All teams that placed first and second will proceed to the
World Finals.
There will be a total of 700 teams from more than 30 countries
competing at the World Finals. Participants include teams from Australia,
Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg), Canada, China, Germany,
Hong Kong, Hungary, Japan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Russia,
Siberia, Singapore, Slovakia, the United Kingdom, and West Africa, as well
as every state in the U.S.
The Savannah Country Day team chose the "Scene From Above" problem, a
challenge involving innovative transportation, sponsored by NASA. Over a
seven-month period, Lewis and her team mates had to "build and run three
small (shoebox-size) vehicles to transport items from an orbit area to an
assembly station. The items were to be added to a three-dimensional
representation of a scene of the Earth as viewed from space," as directed
by written instructions that applied to all teams, worldwide, that chose
this project.
The vehicles are required to be powered in different ways. One
vehicle has to carry its own energy source while the other two vehicles
travel on momentum resulting from different energy sources.
As if this weren't enough of a challenge, the team then had to
dramatize the vehicles in a play they themselves wrote and in which they
also act.
The Savannah Country Day team invented one vehicle that has its own
motor. It turns on, but doesn't have any controls, Lewis reports. The team
has dubbed this vehicle "the dog," presumably because it mimics a dog's
unpredictable movements.
A second vehicle, dubbed "the snail," is a propelled by a magnet
attached to its back and pulled toward another magnet fifteen feet away. A
third vehicle is propelled by a rubber band, sort of like a sling shot.
Boosting the whimsey, team members gave this vehicle wings and they call it
"the bird."
The scientific aspect of the project cannot be dismissed. "Some of
our team members are really good at science. If you're an inch off it can
screw the whole thing up," says Lewis.
But science has to be wrapped in creativity to be successful in
Odyssey of the Mind competitions. All three of Lewis' team's vehicles were
decorated to look like the animals they're named after. To create the
appearance of a snail, the young people used the shell of a dryer hose, for
example. Their presentation will be judged, not only on the basis of its
scientific achievement, but also on the basis of creativity, use of
materials, and, not least of all, humor.
"Jokes get us style and humor points. It's a good thing if the
audience laughs," explains Lewis.
The Country Day team have worked their vehicles into a play that
revolves around a stolen food pyramid. The characters are overweight
(wearing pillows under their clothes) until the pyramid is restored by
superhero, Fiberman.
Lewis, who lives on Wilmington Island, is looking forward to the
world competition and especially to meeting young people from all over the
world. She anticipates meeting some students whose only English may be
"trade dragon." Meaning they'd like to trade pins.
Trading pins is a big part of the Odyssey of the Mind subculture.
Each state and country that competes has a distinctive pin. World-level
contestants get a number of pins to trade.
The "dragon" pin of Georgia started out, more prosaically, as a worm
in a peach‹a familiar Georgia symbol. By the time the manufacturers were
done with it, though, it looked more like a dragon, Lewis explains. As the
"Georgia dragon," the state Odyssey of the Mind pin has become one of the
more coveted pins to trade for at Odyssey events, she reports.
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