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Bridge Building a Highlight of Physics Class    By Taylor Johnson and Brett Heitzman Every year Brodhead High School’s Physics’ class has a force project that is a little more “hands on” than others. It is in the force section and is a part that the teens tend to like a little more. This project is bridge building, no not the building of bridges that cars would drive on. The students are given fifteen sticks of “Balsa” wood and a container of glue and then left alone to deal with the problems of how they will make their project look the best and stand up to the weights put on it. The projects are judged in three categories, design, how much weight they can hold, and how good they look. The design is how close the bridge is to the drawing that was made at the beginning of the project. The weight is judged as a competition of how much weight the bridges can hold, and is against the rest of the class. The final grade comes from how good the project looks and how symmetrical it is to the rest of the bridge. This year the classes have chosen many different designs of bridges, ranging from a flat suspension bridge to grand truss bridges. These bridges were in the lab packet that Mrs. Knoke handed out two weeks ago, and were a guide to how they would be able to design the bridge. Each class started out by getting into groups of two, and then had to draw up a schematic of the design of the bridge. After Mrs. Knoke’s OK, the groups then were able to start building the bridge. The schematic needed to be to scale and should have been the general idea of what the group was going to do. The next step was to start using the balsa wood and glue to make the bridge, so out came the scalpels and box cutters to cut the wood into the correctly sized pieces. It was suggested that the groups would glue the wood to the wax paper to make the “shell” of the bridge, and then after the glue had dried, a member of that group peeled the wood off of the wax paper. The general consensus of the class was that it was hard to glue some of the upper sections of the bridge, so the students found a hair dryer to quickly dry the glue while another student held the piece steady. This idea seemed to work pretty well, except that the hair dryer was in high demand, which caused much craziness. After a couple days the bridges started to take shape, and each group looked at each others projects and were saying that theirs were much better than the competition. The last couple of days of the project were used to reinforce the bridges so they would hold the weights that were put on top of them. The design of the bridge is very important. After hours of research most of the groups came up with the idea that triangles would probably be the strongest supports of the bridge. Nothing Greasy about this Presentation    By Brett Heitzman and Adam Hunt On Friday November 14th, and Saturday November 15th Brodhead High School’s musical department put on the musical Grease, which was a huge success. On both of the nights, the audience was sold out with 400 plus people, which was a very good turnout for the musical that was heavily talked about. Before the performance on Friday everyone was very anxious and excited for the show to start. Mr. Calhoon had everyone go to their places at about five minutes to 7:00, and right at the top of the hour the director started playing the first song “Rydell Alma Mater.” After that song Miss Lynch (Amanda Heins) and Patty Simcox (April Austin) were the first ones to say their lines and the show was started. The musical consisted of classic songs like “Summer Nights,” “Greased Lightning,” and “We Go Together.” For the Greased Lighting scene Randy Johnson, Bob Hycnar, and Ron Goodman made a car using a golf cart and then adding plywood, paint, pipes, sheet metal and other materials had it looking pretty sweet. The car was driven on stage by Taylor Johnson (Kenickie) while the Greasers danced and sang around it, while Taylor had the solo for that song. Micah Wallace (Danny Zuko) and Miranda “Virginia” Powers (Sandy Dumbrowski) also used the car during the drive-in movie scene which included the song “Stranded at the Drive-In,” which was sung by Micah. One of the most energetic scenes of Act 1 would have had to been “We Go Together,” where the whole group sang and danced to end the first act. The second act opened with everyone at the prom, and as soon everyone was done with their lines the scene changed to another number called “Born to Hand Jive,” sung by Jordan Reimer (Johnny Casino.) This was another one of the energetic songs in the musical. The dance consisted of THE hand jive, which is a way of, well, jiving your hands. Other soloists included Erin Calhoon (Marty), Brittany Goss (Rizzo), Adam Hunt (Teen Angel), Tanner Gibbs (Roger), and Alex Wallace (Doody.) Other cast members included Pat Smith (Vince Fontaine), Brett Heitzman (Eugene), Rosa Garcia (Cha-Cha), and Annie Hamel (Frenchy), and Andrew Goodman, David Earleywine, Bryce Hegi, and Ryan Lindley as the Greasers. In addition to all these roles was a wonderful ensemble that included a mix of freshman, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. A great big hand goes out to Mr. Calhoon, because of if his hard work and dedication he makes the musical very enjoyable and once again the talk of the town. Mrs. Calhoon should also get congratulations for her work towards the costumes, sewing, and working with the crew. And anyone else who helped with this musical in any way also deserves to be thanked, because without all of these people working together this show would never be able to happen.

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