Whiz kids science how to#
In science, knowing how to question and speculate when you don’t have the answers matters just as much as having a ready answer to a problem. The questioning on areas outside a finalist’s expertise may seem unfair. Contest judge Philip Deshong discusses the difficulty of judging a contestant’s sense of wonder. Viewers watch contest personnel wait until one minute before midnight to receive a last minute application. Ironically, “Whiz Kids” shows the Intel Science Talent Search administrators definitely try to balance their sympathy for the students with their determination to administer the contest as fairly as possible. But that pain is balanced by parental loving support. That knowledge does not makee seeing the image of hopes dying in a person’s eyes any less painful to watch. Given the odds, a failure to make the final cut is far more likely than not. The filmmakers don’t shy away from depicting the stresses of the Science Talent Search competition process. Those resources are far beyond what the viewer sees of the school science labs in Kelydra’s area. A conversation between Kelydra and her best friend mentions the resources Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School makes available for students interested in competing in the Intel contest.
“Whiz Kids”’ does deal directly with the contest’s class and political issues. Kelydra wants to have her research publicly recognized.
Harmain sees the talent search as the ultimate test of his self-worth. Ana fears failure to win the contest would end both her dreams of being a scientist and affording college. Shepard and DiFeliciantonio get sufficiently intimate with their subjects that they capture Ana’s, Harmain’s, and Kelydra’s fears and desires regarding the Intel-sponsored contest. To work on her botany studies, Ana traveled from Long Island, New York to Fort Collins, Colorado. Harmain persistently approached paleontologist Bonnie Blackwell, Ph.D.
Kelydra used her homemade lab to study water samples and invent a method of removing C8 from water. Yet that reality doesn’t daunt their determination to obtain hands-on practical experience. None of them attend magnet schools specializing in elite scientific study. The kids’ odds against success are daunting from the start. Out of something like 3,000 nationwide applicants, only 40 are chosen as finalists. Formerly known as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, this intensely competitive Super Bowl of high school science project competitions provides $100,000 to the grand prize winner.
The crucible that melds these three teens’ personal struggles and their scientific research is the Intel Science Talent Search. That company is both her community’s largest employer and the source of her father’s pension. Yet her project challenges the interests of Du Pont Chemicals. Environmental scientist Kelydra hails from West Virginia, a state under-represented in science competition winner’s lists. Pakistani-American paleontologist Harmain is determined to show he can rise above a marginal family background of father abandonment and being raised on food stamps and money from scavenged aluminum cans. Ecuadorian-American Ana is a fiercely competitive botanist who comes from an ethnic community largely absent from the winner’s circle of elite science contests. The miracle of local filmmaker Tom Shepard (who Beyond Chron interviewed in a recent article) and Tina DiFeliciantonio’s “Whiz Kids” is that the documentary gives equal due to both its subjects’ scientific research and the personal challenges that dominate their lives.Īna Cisneros, Harmain Kahn, and Kelydra Welcker are the titular high school whiz kids. Yet there’s also an awareness of the intellectual distance between these kids and those of average intelligence. There is admiration for these kids’ precocious intelligence. The slang term “whiz kids” both praises and distances the children referenced by the term.
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