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Younger students figure into Lehigh U. math contestJOSEPH WU, a seventh-grader at Lower Macungie Middle School, tackles the numbers with the Emmaus High School team in the Lehigh University High School Math Contest at the university's Packard Lab Auditorium in Bethlehem. Michael Kubel
The Emmaus High School team needed another body Saturday, a body with a head for math. Catherine Wu knew where to look, Lower Macungie Middle School, and she knew who to look for: her brother, Joseph. And so 12-year-old Joseph, a seventh-grader, who two years earlier scored perfectly in a national middle school math contest, was recruited to join the Emmaus High math team at the 26th annual Lehigh University's High School Math Contest at Packard Lab Auditorium in south Bethlehem. It's a finger-chewing, hair-twirling, two-hour competition in which 187 ''Good Will Hunting''-like students from 26 high schools answer algebraic and geometric questions to win team plaques, individual cash awards and the right to join the national team. ''I usually tried to picture the answers,'' Joseph said when the 40-question test ended at 12:05:27. ''But I didn't answer a lot of the questions. I answered about 15 of them.'' The 40 questions start out ''easy'': How many pairs (x, y) of positive integers satisfy 2x+7y=1,000? Answer: 71. Then they get near-impossible: A semicircle is inscribed in a quadrilateral ABCD in such a way that the midpoint of BC coincides with the center of the semicircle, and the diameter of the semicircle lies along a portion of BC. If AB=4 and CD=5, what is BC? Answer: 4 times the square root of 5. It's pencil, paper, perception, intuition only. No calculators. ''He was put on the ninth-grade team, and I'm on the 12th-grade team,'' Catherine said of her brother, who was more than a head shorter than most of his competitors. ''I think his score will help them. He likes math. I think I did OK, but it was harder than last year's.'' That's saying something. Last year's top individual finishers went on to win the national championship in the American Regions Math League. ''I'm pretty good at math, but I'm not as good as these kids are,'' said professor Don Davis, who has devised the test since 1981 and coaches two national teams with Kenneth Monks, Davis' former doctoral student, who now teaches at Scranton University. ''Somehow or another these kids can see it [the answer] right away. They have a special talent.'' Salisbury High School sophomores Albert Safi, Neil Clark and John Gardus said they did not care how they did on the test. Gardus, 16, said their teacher wanted them to see how hard Davis' test was, and told them not to get disappointed by their results. ''Still, it'd be nice to prove her wrong,'' Clark, 15, said. Surveying his team, Liberty High School teacher Mark Hoffman said the Lehigh contest batters the notion that boys are better than girls in math. ''I have an awful lot of girls on my two teams, and there used to be a paradigm that girls cannot do math,'' Hoffman said. ''But all these kids are honors students, and you have to constantly keep challenging them. Otherwise they'll get lazy, roll over and do the minimum to get an A.'' After hours of finger-chewing and hair-twirling over questions about Dick's and Jane's ages, the diameter of a circle and triangular angles, a chorus echoed out the door: ''I didn't get one circle question.'' Joseph Wu has nothing to be ashamed of. They're older than he is, and he scored the median, 9. steve.esack@mcall.com 610-861-3619 » Right to your doorstep! - Click here to subscribe to The Morning Call » Purchase full page reprints from today's edition and more » Get news on your cell at www.mcall.com More info Copyright © 2006, The Morning Call |
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