FORT DEFIANCE — It was frustration, bordering on panic, that Adriana Shields and Caden Richter experienced Friday, May 4, as the two Stewart Middle School seventh-graders examined their gravity roller coaster.
Standing under a pavilion in the Planet Snoopy section of Kings Dominion, the two 13-year-olds watched as, time after time, the ball bearing fell off before reaching the end of the track they had built. Most frustrating of all, it kept leaving the track at different points, making pinpointing the problem more difficult.
It had worked before leaving the school, but being stored in the cargo compartment of a charter bus during an almost two-hour ride hadn't been kind to the coaster built out of plastic tubing and coat hanger wire.
The two students, along with Henry Gutshall, spent almost three months building the coaster as part of a project for their STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics — class.
Now, with just over an hour before judging, Shields and Richter — Gutshall didn't make the trip to Kings Dominion — scrambled to remedy the problem.
The next few hours, and eventually the next few days, held plenty of intrigue, including a scoring discrepancy that, almost four days later, changed the final results.
Why roller coasters?
This is the third year Heidi Whitecotton and Bess Trainum are teaching STEM, a class they initially conceived as a high-level math class. But since the two teachers developed the class it's evolved into including more science.
The students enrolled in STEM are all high achievers, and the class is a lot more student-driven. The class has involved projects ranging from growing Wisconsin Fast Plants, computer coding, cardboard engineering and genetics studies.
And throughout all the projects, the teachers are asking for feedback from the students.
"Sometimes their age, they get overlooked," Whitecotton said. "But these are the kids that can definitely articulate to us here's what worked, here's what didn't."
They also do two longterm projects every year. One is a STEM expo project that the students work on in first semester and present at a county-wide event in February.
Then, starting last year, the students built gravity roller coasters during second semester for a competition held at Kings Dominion and judged by staff from Richmond's MathScience Innovation Center.
Last year, since it was the first time teachers or students had done anything like this, the goal for the students was fairly simple — get a working track.
This year, the expectations were a little higher. The teachers were looking for more loops — four loops was the requirement for the best grade — as well as the coaster's theme, its attractiveness and its ability to recapture energy.
That final criterion came out of a discussion with the judges last year. They didn't want to just see a roller coaster where the ball bearing fell throughout. Recovering energy at various points throughout the ride was an important part of a successful roller coaster.
However, as the teachers observed the students' work — groups of three or four students worked on each coaster — they realized there was more than just science being taught.
Going into the project, most students had an idea of what their coaster would look like. Last year, Shields and Richter worked together on an Indiana Jones-themed roller coaster. They admit they were pretty ambitious, drawing up plans that involved seven different color-coded parts of the track
"Last year, being sixth graders and not really mature yet, we just had huge ideas," Richter said.
Shields said they weren't just huge ideas, but stupid ideas. Richter laughed, admitting they even had a goal to impress Kings Dominion so much that the amusement park would build a real-life version of their coaster.
"That obviously did not happen," Richter said.
Four days before last year's competition, the group was still tearing down parts of their track and rebuilding it.
There's a reluctancy for students, especially the high-level students in STEM, to scrap their initial plans and start over. Whitecotton and Trainum could often be heard telling them that the physics weren't in their favor and a new plan may be the way to go. They explained that it's more of a failure to stick with an idea that's not working than to regroup and form another plan.
Dealing with failure and persevering were two lessons outside of science that building roller coasters taught the students.
"They have to have a little bit of grit to keep going, to try again and to figure it out when it keeps failing," Trainum said. "And I think that's a huge lifeskill that sometimes we miss in this SOL era."
Working in a group setting was also an important lesson learned.
"A lot of these kids do well on their own," Whitecotton said. "But when they have to learn to listen to somebody, accept their ideas, to justify their own ... it's a lifeskill to be able to deal with other people appropriately and effectively."
The Olympian
Shields and Richter met in the fifth grade at Clymore Elementary. Both were advanced math students and, because they found the subject easy, their teacher had them working together on IXL, an online math site that presented them more of a challenge.
Sitting in a corner, solving online math problems together, is where the two got to know one another. Their teacher even had them creating PowerPoint presentations to help the other students review for their math SOL tests.
"I feel that really brought us together as friends," Richter said.
Shields said that, even though she's not sure they had the respect of their classmates, standing up in front of a classroom and teaching did give her more confidence and a better understanding of how other students learn.
By the time they were in sixth grade at Stewart, the two met Gutshall, who had just moved to the area. They bonded over both their love of academics and sports. All three play a variety of sports. Richter and Gutshall even played on the same basketball team this past year.
Richter and Shields are also in band together, both playing trumpet.
And, for the past two years, they've been in STEM together.
"There's more of an opportunity to do stuff in this class than in other classes," Gutshall said when asked why he likes the class.
One issue a lot of groups had when building roller coasters was balancing track construction and theme. Students were sometimes more concerned about decorating the coaster than getting a working track.
Richter, Shields and Gutshall learned last year that wasn't the way to go. This year, they made sure the track was completed and working before any decorations went on the coaster.
They did, however, have a theme from the start — The Olympics.
"We couldn't decide if we should do winter or summer [Olympics], so we just did both," Shields said.
Gutshall is the more laid-back member of the trio. Richter and Shields are super competitive. Gutshall had to, at times, be the tie breaker when the other two couldn't come to an agreement.
"Pretty much competing for the best idea," Richter said. "And it's not really just to one-up each other, but what's best for the group and the roller coaster. We want this to be as good as possible."
Even the name of the coaster became a battle between Richter and Shields. Richter liked The Olympian. When Shields first heard his suggestion, she simply said, "Uh, no."
She struggled to find a different name, but when she couldn't do better, she resorted to other languages. One day, in class, she searched the internet for the Greek translation of "The Olympian." Sure, The Olympics started in Ancient Greece, giving her a valid reason for the idea, but, in reality, the only reason she wanted a different name was so they wouldn't use Richter's idea.
Trainum overheard Shields being asked if beating Richter was the reason she worked so hard to come up with a different name. The teacher just laughed and said, "I think you have a pretty good handle on their relationship."
After the group finally settled on Richter's name, the three worked well together on building the track.
There was plenty of trial and error along the way. They had to reduce three loops at the end to just one because there wasn't enough speed to get through all of the loops. Near the beginning of the track, the three had to reinforce one of the curves with more wire to prevent the ball bearing from falling off.
At one point, early in the process, they had an idea to cut The Olympic rings in a board that sat in the center of the coaster and let the track pass through the rings. They decided that would be difficult at best and scrapped the idea.
By the week before the competition they had a working track with four loops and plenty of energy recovery.
Then, on the final weekend before the trip to Kings Dominion, Shields took the coaster home to finish up decorating, which included adding flags from all of the countries that have hosted The Olympics.
Kings Dominion and beyond
The bus arrived at Kings Dominion around 9 a.m. Judging was scheduled just before 11 a.m. In those two hours, Shields and Richter set up their coaster and worked to figure out why the ball bearing wasn't staying on the track.
They tweaked the track at various points, finally getting the ball bearing to remain on the track for one complete run. Then, on the next run, it fell off near the second turn. Later, it fell off in the final loop. And again, it came off the track somewhere in the middle. Then it worked again.
Both Richter and Shields were showing signs of frustration, but their dads, who had made the trip, finally convinced them to just leave the coaster alone and hope for the best when the judging began.
That seemed to be the answer. Each group got three turns to demonstrate their track. The ball bearing stayed on the track two of the three times for Richter and Shields.
The judges liked what they saw and what they heard when Richter and Shields were asked questions about the construction of the coaster.
"Smooth runs," one wrote on their score sheet. "A little bumpy in a couple of spots, but not much."
"Very knowledgeable," another wrote about Richter and Shields. "Love the Winter/Summer theme."
"Great understanding of the needs of the track, support board," the third judge wrote.
After the judging, the kids were allowed to explore Kings Dominion until 4:30 p.m. when the awards would be presented. There were 71 total coasters — 18 from Stewart Middle School — and eight schools represented in the competition.
Stewart Middle School was shutout of the first few awards - superlatives for creepiest theme, best name, etc. — but when it came to the top three overall winners, Stewart swept the competition.
And here's where the twist happened.
The Olympian was name third-place overall. Richter and Shields went on stage to claim their plaque. It was obvious they were disappointed they didn't place higher. That's the nature of being competitive.
Still, immediately after the awards, they said the right things.
"Three out of 71 is pretty good," Richter said. "It's nice that Stewart took home all three."
"I'm glad they won," Shields said pointing to the overall winner. "They deserved it, definitely."
But once they returned to Steward late Friday night and placed the roller coaster in the library, Shields was asked by one of the teachers if she wanted to put the plaque in front of the coaster to show they won third.
"It doesn't matter," Shields said, shrugging her shoulders. As Richter had said, third was "pretty nice," but it was evident that Shields wanted more than pretty nice.
Then she got it.
Four days later, on Tuesday morning, while Whitecotton and Tranium were reviewing the judges' score sheets, they realized there was a miscalculation on one of the sheets. It involved the run time.
The longer a ball bearing was on the track — the judges gave maximum scores for more than 12 seconds — the higher the score. But Whitecotton and Trainum realized that one of the scores in that category had been calculated incorrectly. If it had been done correctly, The Olympian would have won first place.
The teachers contacted someone at Kings Dominion, who investigated the issue and eventually acknowledged there was an error. The Olympian was the overall winner and a new plaque would be sent to the three students.
Richter, Shields and Gutshall found out about the mistake and their victory on Tuesday afternoon.
"I was really excited," Shields said. "Yeah, that was pretty good for us. I kind of felt bad for the other groups because they got knocked down a place, but ..."
Shields then just shrugged her shoulders. Really, what else was there to say. All three students had said from the beginning that the class grade was much more important than anything the judges said at Kings Dominion.
But now that they were the overall winners, it was tough to hide the excitement.
Said Richter, "It certainly is the cherry on top."