By ANDRIANNA MARSTON

alm045@latech.edu

 

Physics professors claimed the number one spot at the engineering and science student and faculty quiz bowl competition March 28.

Michael Piehler, president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and a senior mechanical engineering major, said this is the first time ASME and the Society of Women Engineers have sponsored the competition together for student and professor teams to square off against each other during the annual engineering week.

“The competition was a perfect opportunity to give engineering and science students and professors a chance to socialize on a playing field,” Piehler said.

“This program is the beginning of breaking a social barrier between students and faculty.”

Piehler said the rules were simple and relaxed.

Nine teams consisted of no more than four students or four professors.

Five questions were asked to each team, and if one team answered a question wrong, the opposing team had a chance to respond. No outside help was allowed.

Many students in the two clubs helped organize the social event.

Jane Petrus, a member of SWE and a junior mechanical engineering major, helped with registration for the event.

“When we first started organizing for the competition, we decided we wanted to make this event open to all engineering and science majors,” she said.

“Since engineering and science is one college, we wanted this program to be a time where the two academic areas of excellence could unite together and join forces,” Petrus said.

She said the two organizations decided to take a different approach with the questions.

Michael McDaniel, vice president of ASME and a junior mechanical engineering major, said he helped form many of the questions that were asked during the competition.

“I was responsible for the science and engineering questions,” McDaniel said.

“My main objective was to find challenging engineering and physics questions that would actually stimulate the students’ and the faculty’s minds.

“So I pulled many of the questions from the Stanford University Web site, and I took a few concept questions from my old notebooks,” McDaniel said.

Some of the questions had the professors scratching their heads.

Lee Sawyer, team captain of the winning group and an associate professor of physics, said all of the questions were fair; however, one question caught him off guard.

“Although my team was not on the stand competing, the tie-breaker question included Sesame Street characters in a physics-related question, which took me by surprise,” Sawyer said.

Sawyer said only one student team struck a little fear in his heart about winning.

“I was kind of worried at the end when my team had to compete against the group of physics students for the winning title,” Sawyer said.

“If my team had lost the competition to the physics students, I would have been so embarrassed, seeing that I’ve probably taught them everything they know,” Sawyer said.

He also said he would have rather lost against a group of students who were not majoring in physics than to lose against his own students.

Sawyer said he hopes the faculty participation relayed a message to the students.

“The faculty participation should have shown the students how much we care about them and how important it is to keep the two fields together,” Sawyer said.

McDaniel said, “Although all of the professor teams didn’t win the number one spot, they still won the overall competition because they passed the knowledge to our generation, and without them, the students wouldn’t have known many of the answers to the questions.”