School’s race brings learning full circle

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Several days before the Lindy 500, Riverdale Country School’s (RCS) annual race of rubegoldbergesque, student-made machines, sophomore Trevor Simon faced a problem with his vehicle — a hybrid of a regular bicycle and the old-fashioned kind with a giant front wheel.

“It was pretty scary. I fell off a couple times,” he said. “Now I’m going to weld these four bars on and put these wheels for support so it doesn’t fall.”

After realizing that his initial calculations for the supports were off, Trevor did the geometry to come up with a better plan and readied to weld the parts during class on May 27.

“The welder is actually very dangerous,” said Trevor. “But once you’re really into it and feel confident, you weld pretty well.”

The student learned the technique from Riverdale Country School’s design engineering class, which teacher Josh Merrow described as “a survey of different fields of engineering through the lens of art.” Tenth- through 12th-grade students in the class, along with an earnest group of fifth- and sixth-grade students, were putting their finishing touches on entries in the playful competition as the end of the school year approached.

“The idea is to show kids, give them a goal that has sort of a public face to it, show them how to use a few tools and see what happens,” said Mr. Merrow. “This is kind of a celebratory project.”

Two sixth-grade girls in a wide workshop devoted to the design engineering class were too busy working on their project during their lunch break to answer a reporter’s questions at length. While Giana Aguire held a piece of plywood and Sabrina Gordon used a power drill to install brackets, the former tersely noted, “We are going to push” the completed product through the finish line.

“I love how there are no gender barriers in this room. There are no rules around who does what,” remarked Lila Locksley, a RCS spokeswoman on hand during the afternoon.

A trio of seniors was working on some grandiose plans. They had welded 20 pieces of metal into a roughly 14-foot-tall wheel with a unicycle in the middle. Their goal was for rods connecting the unicycle to the giant circle to create enough force to propel the contraption forward.

“It’s like a hamster wheel, except the reason a hamster wheel doesn’t move is it’s attached to the wall or attached to the ground. This doesn’t have that other piece, so it’s going to move forward,” explained Alex Hutchinson.

After the large, outside wheel bent during test runs, the boys decided to spend the afternoon welding another support rod to the unicycle. 

All the students wielding welders donned helmets and wore thick smocks. 

Juniors Natalia Beritez and Olga Ivleva were working on a pile of seven-foot-long metal rods inside the workshop. They were trying to build a coffee-cup-shaped vehicle with the motto “Riverdale runs on DAAR,” a reference to Head of School Dominic A.A. Randolph.

“There’s a lot of math, a lot of balancing, figuring out angles, trying to make metal rods bend in those angles,” said Olga, who, like her classmate, was also taking pre-calculus and trigonometry. “Right now we’re welding, which is difficult and hot, but it’s fun.”

The design for their final product called for a more than 6-foot-tall structure with a 4-foot-wide base and 5.5-foot-wide top. Who would steer the vehicle during the June 1 race, named after the campus’ Linda M. Lindenbaum Center for the Arts?

“We haven’t decided yet,” the girls said with a laugh inside the noisy workshop.

For all the fun and games, Melissa Belardi, who co-teaches the design engineering class, pointed out that the competition embodies the school’s “STEAM” approach — incorporating art in the usual grouping of science, technology, engineering and math.

“They use a lot of engineering science to build things, but on top of that, the aesthetic and the creative process are emphasized,” she said. “That’s the real artistic part.”

Pending graduation, and his giant wheel-shaped entry, prompted Alex to wax poetic about his time at RCS.

“I feel that as a senior, I’ve come full circle,” he said. “At this point four years ago, I was in eighth grade, nervous, didn’t know what to expect from high school. Now I’m at the same point again, waiting for college.”

Riverdale Country School, Josh Merrow, Melissa Belardi, Shant Shahrigian

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