by Mark Hebert
Superior High School held its annual Tech Night last Thursday, drawing nearly 400 guests and supplying some laughs, some looks into the future, and a few hair-raising displays.
In Jamie Toivonen’s science class, Ashlynn O’Brien went from looking like a normal teenager to a modern-day version of Phyllis Diller as Toivonen flipped the switch on her handy-dandy Van der Graaf generator, making O’Brien’s hair raise to the roof.
“That was pretty sweet,” said O’Brien. “I tried it last year but my hair didn’t stick up like it did today.”
The sophomore at Superior High School said that the Van der Graaf generator, which made her hair stick up like a “big fro” was the highlight of her night so far, but added that the night was still young.
One of the night’s bigger successes was the video made by Superior’s Business Professionals of America, a mock-umentary covering littering and the effects that litterbugs have on society (a newscast that would have made TV news anchor Ron Burgundy proud.)
“It took us about a week to shoot it and then editing took another week,” said Travis Stroot who played, among other roles, one of the news correspondents.
Not only did the video – which concluded with five minutes of outtakes and bloopers – catch the eye of large crowds of spectators on Thursday night in Superior, it also gained accolades from its intended audience, judges at the BPA contest.
“We took fourth in state out of 30 teams,” said Brian Labbe, news anchor of the film. “We got docked 25 points because we didn’t fill out the paperwork, and we lost first place by 20 points. We were pretty upset by that.”
“It was still a lot of fun,” said Stroot, who at one point interviewed Superior mayor and math teacher Mike Woods. “It was a lot of hard work but it was fun.”
One of the most dramatic events of the night was Superior seventh graders Josh Goins and his Dew-Express. Goins, whose project included a hodgepodge of string, text books, weights and a Matchbox car, said that the basic concept was that the toy car would zip down the a race track and start a chain reaction that would end with a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records knocking a 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew over, the sugary liquid inside finding a new home in a plastic cup.
The first two runs were a little off, but the final run was a success.
“I just started drawing on a piece of paper and the idea materialized,” said Goins of the project’s creation. “I kept doing stuff until I figured out how I wanted it, about four weeks, and it came together nicely tonight … after a few runs.”
Blake Sevalstad used a Nintendo Wii to show people that they can exercise while playing video games, while students and adults played a game of football trivia which showed how fun spreadsheets can be, in just a few of the 20 or so displays guests could interact with on the night.
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