Junior geniuses brainstorm on energy sources

Kristin Harty

FROSTBURG — The brainpower assembled last week in a science laboratory at Frostburg State University could help solve America’s energy crisis.

Just give it a few years.

Twenty-four Marylanders spent the week at FSU studying alternative energy sources such as solar and wind power, but they aren’t Nobel Prize-winning scientists or PhD candidates.

They’re middle school students — really smart middle school students.

“Once I kind of figure it out, it’s pretty easy for me,” said Josh Mason, 12, of Little Orleans, who with his classmates is learning physics concepts most high school students haven’t mastered. “Sometimes it takes a while to figure out how to do something.”

Selected from an elite group of gifted and talented students, participants traveled to Frostburg from across the state to study basic principals of voltage, current, power and electricity — ultimately deciding for themselves whether wind and solar power are practical sources of energy for average consumers.

The program, called the Center for the Physics of Solar and Wind Power, is one of 24 summer academic “camps” sponsored by the Maryland State Department of Education. The state first began offering the summer centers about 40 years ago, said Bill Reinhard, spokesman at the MSDOE.

Topics range from robotics to fine arts to courtroom law.

“It’s a wonderful program,” said Reinhard. “Maryland can’t do enough for gifted and talented education ... We’ve talked with several alum who say the centers helped lead them into their careers as lawyers or mathematicians or scientists.”

Unless the state legislature amends its budget, the program won’t be funded next year.

“We’re hoping the General Assembly sees the wisdom of continuing this program, despite the budget constraints,” said Reinhard, add-ing that the cost of running all 24 summer centers is about $500,000. “We’re hopeful.”

On Thursday, students used a sun lamp and a Styrofoam house with miniature solar panels to determine how efficient solar energy is.

“The real question, in order to find out the electric power, what do we need to know?” asked Hang Deng-Luzader, the FSU physics professor who’s teaching the middle-schoolers.

“Voltage and resistance,” a student said.

“Very good,” said Deng-Luzader.

Sixty-five students applied for 24 spots in this year’s class, Deng-Luzader said. Last year, the first year for the alternative energy center, 71 students applied.

“Our instructors are impressed by how much middle-schoolers know,” she said, adding that students — including her 11-year-old daughter, Makea — sometimes find the material “overwhelming.” This year, three other students are from Allegany County.

“I think we attract so many applications because it’s a hot subject,” Deng-Luzader said of alternative energy. “And physics is taught at an introductory level in middle schools, so parents want their kids to be exposed to these subjects.”

Twelve-year-old Mari-Therese Burton has learned enough so far to decide that it’s not practical for individual houses to have wind turbines. During a field trip Wednesday, students saw two houses in Frostburg that use solar panels and wind turbines in Meyersdale, Pa.

“I think it’s better to have the big ones, because they cost like a million and a half dollars and it would be crazy to put one at every house,” said Burton, of Montgomery County. She wants to be a physicist when she grows up.

“Well, my brother is at Princeton right now and he is also studying physics,” said Burton, who attended a “Physics is Fun” seminar last summer in Baltimore.

Nick Batina has been to plenty of sports camps during summertime, but never a math and science camp, he said.

“It’s really fun,” said Batina, of Frostburg, who will be a sixth-grader next fall at Mount Savage Middle School. “It’s kind of nice to know something that you’re not supposed to know till you get in like eighth grade.”

Contact Kristin Harty at kharty@times-news.com.