LUTHER BURBANK STUDENTS HEAD TO IOWA FOR ODYSSEY OF THE MIND COMPETITION.Byline: Lee Condon Daily News Staff Writer A group of eighth-graders from Luther Burbank Middle School Luther Burbank Middle School can refer to:
The team of seven students won the Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. regional and then the state Odyssey of the Mind championships in March, beating out 1,400 other California teams. The students will compete Thursday through Sunday in the world competition at Iowa State University Academics ISU is best known for its degree programs in science, engineering, and agriculture. ISU is also home of the world's first electronic digital computing device, the Atanasoff–Berry Computer. against teams from 48 other states and 30 countries, including Canada, China, Japan, England, Russia and Germany. While the teams who enter more traditional events like the Academic Decathlon decathlon (dĭkăth`lŏn), in modern Olympic games, a contest for men held over two days and composed of 10 track-and-field events. are quizzed about history, have to write essays and solve math problems, the Odyssey of the Mind competition is more about ingenuity. The Luther Burbank students made it to the world championships on the strength of a wild project called ``Amusin' Cruisin'.'' Their assignment from Odyssey of the Mind organizers was to construct a battery-powered vehicle, which was to be driven through an obstacle course obstacle course n. 1. A training course filled with obstacles, such as ditches and walls, that must be negotiated speedily by troops undergoing training or participants in an obstacle race. 2. of sorts. The presentation could be only eight minutes long and could only cost $100 to put together. The students came up with a way to make the vehicle look like a dog in the beginning of its journey and look like a mouse at the end. Pete Chesney, one of the students on the team, said one the hardest parts of putting the skit together was coming in under the $100 budget. But since this is the team's third year in the competition, they have become seasoned salvage experts. ``We basically found junk parts,'' Chesney said. ``Since we've been doing it for three years we have quite a collection of junk.'' The students are coached by parent volunteers Gary and Maria Allison, whose son Christopher is on the team. Donna Coffey, the principal at the school, said Luther Burbank has fielded teams for the Odyssey of the Mind competition for five years. ``It offers a unique opportunity for youngsters to work as a team,'' Coffey said. ``They have to do all the budgeting and planning.'' The Odyssey of the Mind competition was started in 1978 and originally only involved 28 schools in New Jersey. The event was founded by C. Samuel Micklus, a professor of technology at Glassboro State College in New Jersey. IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) is the corporate sponsor of the competition. |
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