On Feb. 1, Krop students competed at the Science, Engineering, Communication, Mathematics and Enrichment (SECME) Expo and Science Fair at Miami Dade College North.
At the expo, students competed in various competitions, including the SECME Brain Bowl, mousetrap car, bionic hand, egg-drop, water bottle rocket, gaming, esports, SECME banner, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEAM) video and SECME essay. These competitions allowed students to show their creativity and problem-solving skills in different STEAM fields.
Senior Maia Gueron was named a State Finalist in the Science Fair for her project, “Quantifying Regional Perfusion Alterations Induced by Variable Radiation Doses in Left-Sided Breast Cancer Patients.” The project involves assessing the effects of radiation on breast cancer patients, in order to help prevent heart failure, which is correlated with. breast cancer.
“I had done the research over the summer and there were a lot of challenges that came with it, just having a certain time frame that you have to reach, so doing it in a span of certain weeks was an issue but we ended up getting it done,” senior Maia Gueron said.
Other students competed in The Brain Bowl, a fast-paced competition where students answer science-related questions against other schools under a time limit. Krop’s team had juniors Omer Gan-El, Roey Yaari, Jesse Profeta and senior Maia Gueron who secured third place out of 25 competing schools.
“To prepare for it, we searched for study guides and different types of practice questions,” junior Roey Yaari said. “The hardest part of the process was finding good practice questions.”
Krop’s Gaming and Esports team also performed well, earning third place. The team consisted of freshmen Raynard Bailey, Mauro Morales and Marshall Pitts. They played Super Smash Bros in the competition. SECME is a local program whose goal is to give students, teachers and parents a chance to do STEAM activities with nearby colleges, universities, and engineers and to make STEAM education more diverse.
The mousetrap car competition is where students have to build cars that move from the spring of a mousetrap. The team for this competition consisted of sophomores Manuel Gallone, Ben Lumer and Israel Fischer.
Another competition involves students bringing a pre-constructed robotic/bionic hand designed from a kit and are judged based on innovation, realistic prosthetic design and presentation. Krop’s participants included seniors Pasternak Zakhar, Jaime Gampel and Ricardo Gampel. The kit included metals, hardware materials, and plastic.
In the egg drop competition, students build a container to protect an egg when dropped from a height of 2 meters. The winner is determined by the smallest volume container that successfully reduces acceleration on impact. Krop’s competitors were juniors Simon Tchira, Noa Hullu and Dominik Prodrug.
Students also participated in a competition where they had to create a water-powered rocket. Rockets were launched with a set amount of water, and the winner was determined by the longest hang time and best patch design. Krop’s team included seniors Eithan Chocron and Alan Gampel.
“We built it by buying materials including ping pong balls, a strainer, a can of soda and we tried it out several times. The first rocket we built didn’t go high so we ended up buying a sharper strainer and changed the shape of the ping pong ball and it helped the aerodynamics,” Alan Gampel said.
Juniors Valerie Nichols, Valentina Bendahan, Maya Yecutieli and Valeria Volovisky designed a banner representing the year’s theme, “Energy is Everywhere,” incorporating the SECME logo and visuals of different energy sources.
“We had to make a banner featuring the SECME logo and illustrations representing different forms of energy, like the Earth, the sun, water and plants. First, we chose the materials and colors, then designed it on paper before transferring it to the banner. Each day in class, we worked on different parts of it,” senior Valerie Nichols said.
In the STEM video challenge, teams create videos highlighting STEM topics through interviews and presentations.
“We interviewed Mrs. Nartey and asked her questions about STEM’s relationship with computer programming. Then we edited the video to highlight the most important aspects of the topic,” senior Anthony Hansen said.
The SECME essay is a written competition where students write on STEM-related topics. Each school submits one entry. Krop’s essay representative was Valerie Nichols. She wrote about Dr. Lisa Newman, who is a surgeon and oncologist who works on research on triple-negative breast cancer, which affects minority communities.