June 14, 1998
Denver Post
by Karen Augé
BOULDER — The first time the promising young scientists of Summit Middle School tested their prototype device to melt ice in crosswalks, things got a little too heated.
"We had it too hot," said 12-year-old Corrine D'Ippolito. "It melted the little toy cars."
But like any dedicated scientists, they learned from their mistake and forged ahead. They worked into their a sensor that not only turns on the heating coils beneath the asphalt (or in the case of their prototype, beneath the painted plaster of Paris) when the temperature gets down to 38 degrees, but turns off the heat when the temperature climbs to 45 degrees.
Their persistence paid off.
For their hard work devising a way to make icy crosswalks safer, Corinne, James Norton, Paul Franz and Eric Hansford became the second Summit Middle School team in as many years to win a trip to Disney World to compete for the Bayer/National Science Foundation Award for Community Innovation.
The Summit team didn't win top honors — those went to Las Vegas middle school students who designed a safety belt for playground swings. But if the Summit kids were disappointed, they forgot to mention it.
| "I noticed a big problem in the icy crosswalk when cars stopped to let
kids out." — James Norton, 11 |
A few days after three team members returned from Florida — Eric and his family stayed behind for an extended vacation — they were much more interested in recounting how they got to demonstrate their device to science-world heavies and Epcot Center visitors. They also described their ride though Space Mountain with the lights on to see how the attraction works and the morning "we got to have breakfast with some scientists," as James Norton, 11, put it.
They even met Art Fry, "the inventor of the Post-It note," James said.
The grown-up scientists were there that same week, June 1-6, for Discover Magazine Awards for Technological Innovation, an event that Corinne describes as ‘the Academy Awards of science."
For the Summit team, the road to Florida started one frigid day as James' mom drove him to school.
"I noticed a big problem in the icy crosswalk when cars stopped to let kids out," James said.
When he commented on it, his mother told him that about nine years ago, a child had been killed in that crosswalk, on just such an icy day.
With that, James and his teammates knew they had the idea for their project: melt the ice to make the crosswalk safe.
Less easy to arrive at was just how to accomplish that.
First, they thought of solar power. "But that would have cost $2,000 just for the prototype," Corrine said.
Steam was out, because there was no water pipe nearby.
"So we decided to do it electrically," Corinne said.
First came the prototype, which consisted of a baking pan filled with plaster of Paris painted black to represent asphalt, with white stripes painted on to represent the crosswalk. Next, the team ran electric coils through the plaster of Paris, and hooked the coils up to electricity. And, after that first failed experiment, they added a heat sensor. With the prototype working, next came the part Corinne said was her favorite, building the actual model.
The final product was a miniature recreation of the south Boulder area around their school — complete with tiny houses hand-made by Corinne, a tiny replica of the school buildings and tiny trees, all blanketed with simulated snow. And on that simulated snow, toy cars move across a warm, toasty — and safe — crosswalk.
And the cars don't melt.