“If we were small people in that tank, we’d feel so helpless,” said red team member Taylor Jones, who’s from Maryville, Tenn. Splash height represented the wave’s power to destroy.īlue team members use a board to create a wave powerful enough to reach the opposite end of the water tank. Teams also had to make sure each wave they made was the same so that they could measure how high the water splashed at the other end. The grey team did it by sliding a big box into the water. A nearby table held strips of sheet metal, plastic boxes, wooden boards, and various tools.įirst, finalists had to figure out how to create waves at one end of the tank. In “Tsunami Science,” the grey team’s first challenge, finalists faced a 40-foot-long tank that was 5 inches wide and filled about halfway along its length with 10 inches of water. As deadlines loom, Discovery Channel interviewers and cameramen push their way into the action. Students work in teams of five, but judges score them individually on their ability to cooperate, communicate, and think through problems. Figuring out how to tame a tsunami’s destructive power was one of six 90-minute problems presented to finalists at this year’s Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge (DCYSC).Įvery year, DCYSC brings the nation’s top 40 middle-school science-fair winners to Washington, D.C., to compete for thousands of dollars in scholarship money, dream science trips, and other prizes. Luckily, this nightmare is just a simulation. He shakes his head, grabs a handful of plastic zip ties, and runs to the water’s edge.Ĭan a teenager in jeans and a gray T-shirt stop the destructive power of a massive wave with just a bundle of plastic strips and the help of his friends? The answer is: No. “There’s 7 minutes and 49 seconds to finish this thing,” Anudeep says. The clock keeps ticking.Ĭaption: Members of the red team construct a “beach” in a water tank as part of a tsunami simulation. His teammates, all 12-to-14-year-olds, are drawing on a dry-erase board and experimenting with ways to block the giant wave. “We should start focusing on how to prevent the tsunami,” says 14-year-old Anudeep Gosal of Orlando, Fla.
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