FAIRFAX STUDENTS SUCCEED AT TASC

FAIRFAX STUDENTS SUCCEED AT TASC

By LEON THOMPSON - Messenger Staff Writer - December 6, 2004

FAIRFAX--A handfull of Bellows Free Academy-Fairfax students spent the weekend celebrating major victories in the University of Vermont's 2004 Design Technology and Science Connection (TASC).

A five-member squad of BFA-Fairfax students dubbed Canadian Freeze walked away from the annual contest with $1,250 in prizes in three categories.

The only school to place higher than BFA with the $1,000 grand prize win was Sharon Academy, a perennial powerhouse in the competition.

BFA earned $750 in cash, a laptop computer and assorted individual prizes for the team, which consisted of juniors and seniors Kelsey Peterson, Chris Wells, Jason Holloway, Josh Downs and Mike Smith.

"They were excited and ecstatic," team advisor John Tague said this morning. Tague has been a BFA-Fairfax high school math teacher for 13 years.

BFA was in its third year of the 14-year-old contest. The school won in the New School category in 2002 and placed third in the Design Portfolio category last year.

A total of 45 teams from 20 Vermont high schools spent Saturday morning showing off their self-designed and self-constructed recycling machines on the tennis courts at UVM's Patrick Gym.

Teams were assigned to design, build and operate a recycling system that can identify assorted materials -- such as plastic, cardboard and aluminum - and sort them using one motor.

Scoring was based on the number of containers separated in the allotted time, the accuracy of the separation, the amount of energy used to separate them, separation time needed, and the total number separated.

The device could only have a 3 foot base and stand 4 feet high and 5 feet wide, according to Tague.

BFA-Fairfax invested less than $100 into its winning entry, which was made of cardboard and aluminum. Students began working in September.

"A lot of the work was done in the last two weeks," Tague explained. "These guys work better under pressure."

Other Franklin County schools competing this year were BFA-St. Albans, Missisquoi Valley Union High School and Enosburg Falls High School.

Last year, Enosburg students won two first place prizes of $500 each and a new IBM Thinkpad laptop computer.

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