Somerville Math Fund’s 17th annual Scrapheap Showdown, Marble Mayhem, took place last Sunday at Tufts University’s Gantcher Gym.

By Erica Dakin Voolich

On Sunday, October 22, 18 high school students on six teams gathered in the Gantcher Gym at Tufts University to compete in the Somerville Math Fund’s 17th annual Scrapheap Showdown, Marble Mayhem.

Their challenge was to create a Rube-Goldberg device for marbles making creative use of triggers, jumps, loops, or elevators. The “field” was two side by side tables held two feet apart. One marble started its journey by being placed above one table at one corner and ended by stopping on the other table at the opposite corner. Points were awarded according to how long the marble took to traverse the maze, how many obstacles and tricks it maneuvered through along the way, and consistency of time from start to finish. Participants had up to five different sized marbles they could choose to use in their maze.

This year when the students arrived, the usual scrapheap pile included long pieces of foam core and wooden dowels along with the miscellaneous interesting “junk” that the Somerville Math Fund pile usually includes.

The contestants were very busy, planning and trying different ideas, making adjustments while testing with their marbles. One team succeeded in jumping and catching their marble from table to table, another team built what looked like pin ball machine, triggering multiple marbles, a couple of teams had paths with zig-zagging paths downhill. It was fun to watch each of the marble structures being tested everyone hoping their marbles would do what they planned for them to do and to do it in a timely manner. Time was called after 3 hours. It was time for testing the different structures.

The first place team was “Super Seniors” (Yasmin Nazhar, Atticus Borggaard, and Ellery Borggaard) with a score of 1095 points.  Second place was “Slum Gang” (Miles Eisenbraun, Alexander Moulton, and Robert Leoni) with 1030 points.  Third place was “Tech Titans” (Ali El-Saudi, Christopher Montiel, and Julian Barney) with 180 points. Fourth place was “Calculus Crusaders” (Liam Beretsky-Jewell and Darragh Keane) with 130 points.

The teams chose their prizes in the order they finished. The prizes donated were three sets of two tickets to the RedSox (donated by Sam Voolich) for a game in April 2024, three $100 Target gift cards (donated by Chase Duclos-Orsello), and 3 gift cards from Anna’s Taqueria (donated by long term Somerville Math Fund supporters).

The other participating teams were the “The Rats AAAAHHRRERRHHHH” (Serena Wong, Rafael Ronen, and Bhavroop Kaur), and “The LEDS” (Lily Thompson, Elias Colley, and Dash Brenner).

Designers and refiners of the challenge were members of the Somerville Math Fund Board: Fred Bernardin, Sanford Bogage, Adam Foster, Richard Graf, Dan Oshima, Jesse Stern, Erica Voolich, Susan Weiss. Amy Weiss designed the teeshirt and Monica Fernandes designed the sponsor flyer; and Susan and Sanford designed the student recruiting and registration materials, and Sanford managed registration and the Google Classroom for this event.

Michael Morgan and Patricia Murphy-Sheehy (Head of Math Department) at Somerville High helped with suggestions and distribution help of registration materials. The math teachers at Somerville High School, recruited student teams. Bill Trudell videoed the event for Somerville Cable EdTV Channel 15.

Again, Tufts University was our wonderful host donating their gym space for a Sunday event. Last year was our first year back after a three-year COVID hiatus. This was our 17th Scrapheap Showdown and Tufts has been our host for all of these events.

Thanks to our generous sponsors, this activity was both a fund raiser for a scholarship and three teacher grants, provided prizes for the students and allowed the students to participate without paying any registration fee. We offered different levels of sponsorship for the event. Thanks to all of our wonderful donors whose donations will make one scholarship available next spring and four teacher grants in January.

Gold Level (one year of a college scholarship each):

Commercial Cleaning Co./Bickoff Family, Jasper J. Lawson, PhD. & Associates, Julie Schneider, and Tufts University.

Silver Level (one teacher grant each):

East Cambridge Savings Bank, Mr. and Mrs. Donald F. McGoldrick, Winter Hill Bank and a long-term sponsor.

Bronze Level (supporting Somerville Math Fund work):

Chase Duclos-Orsello, A Member of the Somerville High School Faculty,

Zbigniew Niticki, and Sam Voolich.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville. On January 7, we will be looking for teacher grant applications; and in April, we will be looking for scholarship applications. For more information or to volunteer or to make a donation, call 617-666-0666, email mathfund@gmail.com, or go to www.somervillemathematicsfund.org.