Scarsdale Students Win Accolades

The Scarsdale Schools announced achievements of middle and high school students in competitions in math, science and geography.

The Scarsdale Middle School Mathcounts team won first place in the state competition in Troy New York March 15-16. Math teachers Steve Weiss and Heidi Kaplan accompanied the team who emerged first out of 50 teams in the competition. Eighth grader Richard Xu and sixth grader Eric Wei will be part of the State's four-person team representing New York State in the Nationals May 8-11 at Disney World and Steve Weiss will coach of that team.

The team meets once a week and works through hundreds of problems supplied in the Mathcounts handbook that is distributed each year. The group is large and all students are welcome. From this group, top students are selected to attend the county-wide competition with an emphasis on a subgroup of 4 students plus an alternate who go to the states. Weiss attributes the team's success this year to the talent of the kids, their dedication and their love for math. They completed every practice problem he gave them and worked really well together. Weiss also sends kudos to the parents as well for their support.

Here are two sample problems of the type the team might be asked to solve: (see answers below)

Problem 1: Coin A is tossed three times and coin B is tossed two times. What is the probability that more heads are tossed using coin A than using coin B? Express your answer as a common fraction.

Problem 2: The giant earthmover used for open-air coal mining has rubber circular tires 11.5 feet in diameter. How many revolutions does each tire make during a six-mile trip? Express your answer to the nearest whole number.

Geography: Dermot Kantor (Popham 8) won the Geography Bee for the Scarsdale Middle School and then scored in the top 100 qualifiers in the New York National Geographic Geography Bee in January. He will compete again on April 4th in Albany at the NYS level of the Geography Bee. Hats off to Dermot and the Geography Bee coach, CHOICE Humanities teacher Rob Daly.

More accolades:

On Monday and Tuesday, March 10-11, thirteen Scarsdale High School research students attended the Upstate Junior Science and Humanities Symposium along with about 100 students from 30 schools in Westchester County and Upper New York State. Two Scarsdale students participated in the five Speaker Sessions, and two participated in the Competitive Poster Sessions. In the Speaker Sessions, Brian Beitler took third place in Biology and Cindy Du took 2nd place in the Competitive Poster Sessions.

On Saturday, March 15 nine Scarsdale seniors in the science research class participated in the 15th annual Westchester Science and Engineering Fair, hosted by Sleepy Hollow High School. This event was attended by approximately 400 students from over 30 area schools.

4th Place Awards were sponsored by Westchester Academy of Medicine. All Fourth Place winners received a medallion and $25. 4th Place winners included Phillip Liu for Computer Science and Zubin Koticha and Brett Pogostin for Behavior.

Claudia Laurie from Scarsdale received a medallion and $50 as a 3rd place winner in behavior. The award was sponsored by Psychogenics Pharmaceuticals.

2nd Place awards, sponsored by Acorda Theraputics were won by Archana Ram in Cell and Molecular Biology, Rachel Hurst in Earth and Space Science and Brian Beitler in Plant Science. Each received a medallion and $75.00.

Sam Huang was awarded a first place in Microbiology and Cindy Du was awarded first place in Medicine and Health. They were each given a gold medal and $100 sponsored by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

In addition, Cindy Du, was one of the ten top scoring projects and therefore was also awarded an all expenses paid trip to Los Angeles in order to compete in the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair .

Answers:

Problem 1: 1/2

Problem 2: 877 revolutions