In New York City, as in other cities of the United States, every year holds a science and technology Olympiad among high school students. During the Olympics, New York high school students compete in hundreds of different competitions in physics, chemistry, biology, as well as engineering: launch self-made aircraft, parachutes, machines, rockets, anti-gravity robots, and more.
There is a Stevenson School in New York City. Stevenson is admitted to school on the basis of exams and interviews. The Stevenson School has a specially equipped glass body filled with laboratories and workshops that have everything, that is, everything in general. If you want to assemble an orbital station, then it is at the Stevenson school you will find all the necessary equipment. These laboratories have transformed silicon valley teachers who devote all their time to preparing the team for the city Olympics. Students of Styvesson school always take the first place in the city Olympiad in science and technology.
Even in the city of New York, on the outskirts, there is a school with the original name 153. In this school there is a basement at the very end of which there is a small workshop filled with rust piles, wiped sludge paper and other sludge. In this basement I am, not quite a bilingual son of not quite Russian parents. There is also Chris, the son of Korean immigrants who gave him a "good English name" and Dorcas, whom Korean parents also wanted to give a "good English name" but they didn't quite succeed. We are the Olympic team of school 153. Of course there are other members of the team, also children of Korean immigrants, but they have only an indirect connection to this story. There is also Mr. Brown, a physics teacher to whom the school administration has directed our Olympic team. He cries, nervously cries out of the barrel, and exactly at 5 o’clock drives us all out of the workshop because it’s time for him to go home.
For the last Olympics, Chris and I were preparing a plane. Not a plane, but a planner. What a planner we built! We drank it out of a thin fanery and it was supposed to last in the air longer than any other plane and, most importantly, longer than the Stevenson school plane. The main elements of this planar were wings. Chris pulled them out for three months. For the last two weeks, he has brushed those wings with the thinnest sparkle paper. They weighed equally with accuracy to a milligram. In the section, these wings had the shape of a smooth bow that was to give lifting power to our aircraft.
A week before the competition, we started testing. Our plane steamed beautifully in the air, but depending on the launch angle could last in the air from 30 seconds to a few minutes. So Chris started it over and over again, trying to pick up the perfect starting angle. Three days before the Olympics, there was a disaster. Chris tried a sharp angle of attack and the planner crashed into the floor and broke into pieces; the wing gave a crack.
It was scary to look at Chris. For the first time in my life, I saw the face of a man who had changed everything. It could not be glued - the overweight would give the crane. to replace? We had another planner, completely unprocessed and of a different size, and there were three days left before the competition. “This competition you’ve swept,” Mr. Brown summed up, “don’t be foolish, help the guys with the anti-gravity machine better,” and he nervously shrugged out of the flag.
Chris couldn’t help anyone. He sat down on the table and looked stupidly in front of him. His hands trembled. I looked for Dorcas with my eyes and found her at the very end of the workshop over our second workplace. She hardened her wing. I’m not going to describe how we finished the second planner in two and a half days, how Chris came out of the stupor and joined us with Dorcas, how we spent Mr. Brown and stayed at the workshop for the night. We had a new planner for Saturday. With his wings wrapped with a sticky tape, he was far ahead of our previous beauty and did not have to count on the first place, but he was flying.
On the way to the competition, I realized that Chris still hopes to get into the top ten with our planner. It seemed crazy to me, because there are hundreds of schools competing, but you can’t forbid dreaming. In the competition we had three attempts and the result was average. Our not quite aesthetic planner was not very bad. At the end of the competition, the results were announced, reading the names of the students and the names of the schools that entered the top ten starting from the end: 10, 9, 8, 7... when we reached the fifth place, Chris completely disappeared, our planner could not get into the top five. When "second place: Stevenson" was announced, Chris was already heading to the door. When “First Place: Chris Lee, 153th School” was announced, Chris was no worse than his plane.