POINT MUGU : Teaching Math With Missiles

As fighter and bomber planes buzzed overhead, 26 high school students set off homemade missiles Tuesday in an attempt to hit a remote-controlled aircraft at Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station.

But officials at the Science Challenge competition, in which 120 students from the Oxnard Union High and Conejo Valley school districts participated, said they were not teaching pupils war games.

“We’re teaching them how to apply mathematics,” said Bert Pearlman, curriculum director for the Oxnard school district. “This is not teaching them war.”

“The idea is to show them that the practical application is pretty neat stuff,” said Lt. Mike McCloskey.

Here was the problem: If a plane is flying at 50 m.p.h. and a missile trying to intercept it is traveling at 83 m.p.h., when and from what angle do you fire the missile to meet the target?

One student lay on the dirt and gravel trying to eyeball the best angle and point of impact, using mathematical calculations and good old human judgment to make the missile hit that plane.

“I think it’s neat,” said Svetlana Fortner, also a Camarillo High School student.

Jeff Forde, a Camarillo High School student studying physics and calculus, made his missile at home. When one of the fins fell off on the way to the competition, he had to attach it with chewing gum.

But neither Forde nor Fortner, nor any of the other 26 students in the contest, hit the remote-controlled plane with their missiles. Jody Brenner of Newbury Park High School was on the team that came the closest, missing the target by about five feet, McCloskey said.

While these students were firing missiles, their classmates were back in a hangar working on other problems. One group tried to identify animal species by their bones and teeth. Another group analyzed the area’s weather patterns to try to predict weather.

After lunch, 25 students won awards for being on the teams that earned the most points solving the problems.