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KHS PHYSICS STUDENTS TRACK ASST. SUPT. AT NYC MARATHON

In most school districts, part of the responsibilities of the Assistant Superintendent of Schools is to monitor and chart pupil progress and performance. Dr. Ingrid Kiss, Assistant Superintendent for the Kearny School District, traditionally visits Kearny High School and the six elementary schools to assess student performance and achievement. On November 5, 2000, all this will be reversed. At 10:50 A.M., Dr. Kiss will not be walking through the halls of Kearny High School talking to students about their classes. Instead she will be running through the five boroughs of New York City and the physics classes will be monitoring her performance and "track record". Dr. Kiss will be among the 30,000 runners in this year’s 31st New York City Marathon, a 26.2 mile run.

About one year ago, Dr. Kiss became interested in running. In less than a year she qualified to be a runner in the upcoming New York City Marathon. The event draws world wide runners. Kiss has been training the entire year and recently participated in the Liberty State Park half-marathon and in the Long Beach Island 18 miler, where she was awarded second place medal in her age category.

This year, the NYC marathon will literally be a "chip off the old (starting) block" for Kiss and the students in the Corporation Physics classes in Kearny High School. Students in the physics classes will be monitoring Kiss’s progress throughout the race using the Champion Chip System. This system will allow the students to record Kiss’s official time and obtain a post-race record of her selected split-times as well as a "net time" for completing the race. A small plastic transponder microchip will be attached to Kiss’s running shoe. This microchip will be "read" by antennas embedded in timing mats located on the ground at various points during the race. When Kiss crosses the sensor mat at the start of the race and at the 10K, ½ marathon, 20 mile and finish line, she may hear a beep and the time she crossed each location will be recorded and posted to the www.nycmarathon.org website. Participants will have their own "chip" and their statistics can be accessed via the world-wide-web by simply typing in the name of the runner. Students in the Corporation Physics classes are deciding how to use and analyze the data being collected.

Corporation Physics is a departure from traditional teaching. Kearny High School science teacher, John O’Hara, who has received multiple honors and awards from local, state and national organizations for this innovative teaching practice, developed Corporation Physics. In addition to learning physics, students in Corporation Physics learn workplace readiness skills through this innovative pedagogy. In Corporation Physics, each class is conducted as a corporation. The students are the employees and the teacher is the CEO (chief education officer). As in any successful corporation, students become stakeholders in the corporation with 50% of their grade being determined by their performance. In Corporation Physics, the product is knowledge and the responsibility for learning falls as heavily upon the students as it does upon the teacher.

There are seven teams in the corporation: Quality, Quantity, Lab/Special Project, W.I.T.S., Quality Control, Quantity Control, and F.I.N.A.L. Each team is required to prepare a 40-minute presentation embellishing and investigating further the concepts in physics that the instructor taught. Students must write a cover letter and submit a resume to apply to be a member of a team. Students may be on more than one team. These specialized teams work individually and as a whole to complete a task, in this case an understanding of the science of running. This understanding will come from their observation and analysis of Kiss's performance.  

The Quality Team, responsible for the theories, laws and ideas in physics, will be addressing such concepts as the reliability, accuracy and accessibility of measurements. They will present their thoughts on the metric vs. the English system of measurements. Definitions of distance, time, velocity and acceleration as they relate to running and to Kiss in particular will be shared with the class.

The Quantity Team will take the information that the Quality Team presents and quantify it with numbers, formulas, theorems, charts and graphs. They will demonstrate to the class how to compute data about Kiss such as her velocity at the transponder points along the 26.2 mile track and her acceleration between these points. The Quantity Team, using computer technology, will plot graphs and charts showing delta V (changes in velocities) during the race.

The Lab/Special Projects Team will investigate special data such as comparing Kiss’s performance to other runners by gender and age. In addition to each runner’s statistics, this team will have data about the weather such as temperature, wind velocity and direction, barometric pressure and humidity and will show how these factors influence the physics of running and the physiology of the runner. Lining up for the marathon depends on past performance and the winners of previous marathons are first in line. Kiss will be somewhere in the middle. Because of her starting position, Kiss will not hear the starting gun at the same time the runners up in front will because it takes time for sound to travel through the air. Since most runners do not cross the starting line until well after the starting gun fires, (due to the depth of the crowd), the Lab Team will note Kiss’s official time, that is the time she was actually running and her "net time", that is, the time between the starting and finishing line. The Lab Team will also design an experiment, a mini-marathon, to be run by the students on the high school track to investigate accuracy of measurement, the speed of sound in air and the effect of wind and atmospheric drag on the runner.

The W.I.T.S. Team, is an acronym for Web, Information, Technology and Speakers. Webpage designers will introduce Kiss to the world by publishing her photograph and statistics on their corporation web page, www.corporationlearning.com. The students working on Information will include a story about Kiss and the marathon in their company newsletter. Students on Technology will demonstrate to the class how to use the Internet to obtain data about the marathon on every runner in the race and will show the class how to compare Kiss’s performance to runners across America and from around the world. Tables have been composed of world-class standards as a function of both age and distance. From 8 to 80 years of age and older, there are tables to determine a runner’s age graded time. Technology will also be investigating Kiss’s Performance-Level-Percentage (PLP). They will show the other students how to use the Internet to determine the number of men and women participating from each state and country as well as their education, age and occupation. They will know if the runner is a member of a running club or association. The Technology group will also videotape the marathon. Speaker’s Bureau will be preparing a computer presentation highlighting Kiss, the project and the marathon. This presentation will be shown to colleagues and friends of Dr. Kiss, to the parents of the students in the Corporation Physics classes and to everyone involved in the project.

The Quality Control Team and the Quantity Control Team will prepare worksheets with physics questions and problems for the class to solve and answer based on the marathon and the data collected.

The F.I.N.A.L. Team, another acronym that translates to "Failure Is Not Acceptable Language", will prepare a rigorous test on the entire project for the class to complete. Following this, science teacher O’Hara, will give the class his test to assess their progress and performance.

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