Page 161 - 1987.Millard.North

Dr. Ike Pane's very own floral display.
which requires watering :l times a week, soaks up the Mil- Science Heads in New Way
lard North sunshine. (J. BURKHOLDER)
Members of Dennis Gehringer's fourth
hour class. Juniors Shelley Merchant and John Bow-
man watch the fish that are fed every morning. (J. s the science department moved were allowed to display more of their creativi-
through the year, seemingly unchan-
BURKHOLDER ) A !Y· Science Research II started with an enroll-
ged from the previous year, one class
stood in the background. With its instructor ment of 1:2, but because of the time outside of
Dennis Gehringer acting as quide to its four class required, that enrollment was reduced to
enrollees Science Research II moved in a new one junior, Jeramia Ory. and three seniors,
direction. Joel Mischke, Ronald Vanoeveren. and Chris
The class was designed to give the stu- Shearer.
dents a free hand in the choosing and resear- Dr. Ike Pane said he was committed to
ching of a project. In this way. the conven- keeping the class on the list of courses of-
tional labs which as Gehringer said "are like fered, but the seeming lack of student interest
cookbooks" were avoided, and the students presented a problem. In an effort to save the
class, Gehringer actively recruited students,
but the following years would probably decide
the fate of the class.
In a class of this type. there could be little
if any set curriculum. The projects which
the students decided to research covered
many branches of science.
Ory worked with a type of glowing bacte-
ria and attempted to take light intensity read-
ings. He hoped to find ways to breed the
bacteria with other types which do not glow
and make them more easily recognizable.
Mischke used fruitflies to determine
whether exposure to radiation increases the
frequency of mutations. Although he origi-
nally set out to discover the effects of x-rays,
he discovered the amount of exposure was too
low. He then decided to look at the types
of changes. With this knowledge scientists
would know what to look for after incidentes
such as the nuclear exposures at Chernobyl.
Shearer, who used no plans, set out to
build a working gyroscope which is a type of
quidence system used by planes and ships.
He became interested in that type of science
after flying model planes with his father, and
he plans to go on to a career !n aerospace engi-
neering.
Since Vanoeveren had run into problems
using ethanol fuel, he decided to use the op-
portunity of class to compare the performance
of engines run on ethanol as opposed to regular
or unleaded gas. He hoped to prove that en-
gines run on ethanol would not perform as ef-
fectivly.
It was hoped that the class which was a
follow-up to Science Research I would give stu-
dents a place to go after completing the
planned advanced placement science class,
but students would have to show more interest
in the class before it could continue to exist
said Gehringer. IN

Biff Raleigh

Senior Chris Shearer, who is building
a gyroscope . works on a computer while Junior
Jeramia Ory, Senior Ron Vanoeveren and Dennis
Gehringer look on with Senior Joel Mischke in the back-
ground. (P. MAHONEY)
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