Nelson, Kustaborder advance in PJAS
Quintin Nelson, Dan Kustaborder and Philip Chamberlin had successful days at PJAS regionals, with Kustaborder and Nelson advancing to states.
March 5, 2019
Last Saturday, Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science (PJAS Region 6) was held at Penn State Altoona, with a pair of Bellwood-Antis students advancing to the state competition.
Students from throughout Central Pennsylvania participated in the nineteen different categories.
Seniors Daniel Kustaborder and Quintin Nelson received first place awards. They both also won $1,000 yearly scholarships to Penn State Altoona. Phillip Chamberlin won a second-place award.
Nelson did a project on physics and quantum tunneling. “My project was on how the dimensions of the potential barrier affect the probability of a particle tunneling,” he explained.
Nelson has participated in PJAS for four years and he has been awarded first place three times. This year, he was also received Mickey Maholtz Physics award, a special award for an exceptional physics project, and won a $50 Amazon gift card.
“The only thing I was concerned with was talking too fast. There’s a ten minute time period but I had so much information I had to talk fast to get through it all.”
Kustaborder’s project was engineering a race track about friction and making cars of different dimensions finish the race at the same time down a track.
“It feels good to have the work I’ve done pay off,” said Kustaborder, who also advanced to PJAS states as a sophomore.
Nelson and Kustaborder will move onto states from May 19 to the 21 in Penn State UP. Chamberlin might also go along to work as a tech.
PJAS is a statewide organization of junior and senior high students designed to promote interest in science among its members through research projects and investigations. It was first held on March 31, 1934 at Reading, PA with only fourteen high schools participating, compared with 424 schools now.
The goals of PJAS are: to promote greater participation in science and mathematics activities, improve the quality of achievement in mathematics and science by encouraging students to participate in research and develop original ideas, to develop an understanding of the scientific community, to seek improvement of science clubs though the regional and state meetings, and to inculcate among its members true scientific attitudes and humanistic ideals that shall lead to the greater development of service to man
