Wheatley Students Succeed in Advancing to Finals of Al Kalfus Long Island Math Fair!

Posted 7 March 2019

Filed under Academics, Competition, Curricula, Student Clubs, Students

On Friday, 1 March, sixteen Wheatley students competed at the Nassau County round of the Al Kalfus Long Island Mathematics Fair at Hofstra University. Students from schools across Nassau County came to compete at this regional qualifier. Students wrote papers on a mathematics topic that they have not studied in the traditional curriculum. Top papers often have the students’ own creative twists as well as original mathematics as part of their research!

On the day of the competition, students had 15 minutes to present their research to a panel of judges followed by a question and answer period. Achieving at this level is an extraordinary accomplishment for high school students! We are proud of all of our students who participated!

We are honored to announce we will have fifteen students who will be moving to the final round of the Mathematics Fair, which will take place at Hofstra on April 12th.

Please find below the names of the students who competed in the qualifying round as well as the title of their project.

Alex Arbitljacoby (Calculating Atomic Radius)
Alyssa Belle (Preventing Motion Sickness in Virtual Reality)
Anya Chabria (The Applications of Mathematics in Literature)
Shrey Gulati (Magic Squares)
Sarah Hassan (Applying Linear Animation Using Mathematics Programming and Art)
Viraj Jayam (Examining Functions Under Quasi-Stereographic Projections)
Jack Lindenauer (Fibonacci Numbers)
Manav Bansal (Mathematical Models Utilizing Differential Equations to Model Tumor Growth)
Eric Ness (Logic and Arguments)
Armaan Pahuja (Chaos Theory and its effects on Meteorological Predictions)
Krittika Prajapati (Binary Numbers)
Madison Ramos (Mathematical Modeling Neural Networks)
Justin Wong (The Influence of Replacing Prime Numbers in Public Key Cryptography)
Trenton Wong (It’s all about that Base: Three-Halves)
Aaron Zachariah (Transfinite Numbers)
Sharon Zhong (Wind Resistance and Failure Analysis)

It should also be noted that Emily Yogida will be presenting her topic (Solving Rubik’s Cube with Musical Chord Progressions), this coming week at the Suffolk round due to a scheduling conflict.

A big thank you goes to Mary Alexis Pace, DJ Paulson, John Beleckas, and Kasey Caracciolo for chaperoning.

[Thank you to Dr. Robert Teseo for the write-up and the photo!]

$Math Fair Prelim Round 2019$

Wheatley Debate Team Earns Success at Harvard Tournament!

Posted 5 March 2019

Filed under Academics, Student Clubs, Students

On Friday, 15 February, as most students were preparing for the February recess, our Wheatley Debate Team headed up to Boston in order to compete in the annual Harvard National High School Invitational Forensics Tournament.

One of our newest co-curricular clubs, the Debate Team is advised by Mrs. Pilar Principe-Franco and anchored by an extraordinary group of young competitors. At Harvard, their biggest competition to date, the team did an extraordinary job against some very experienced teams! As part of the tournament competition, the Wheatley Debators are organized into smaller pairs of teams. Two of the six teams made it through the preliminary rounds on Saturday and competed in the elimination rounds on Saturday! These are exceptional results for any school, let alone one with a new program!

Remaining Results

Natalia Potrapeluk and Hema Kumar won 3 out of 5 rounds (Novice Level)
Neil Shah and Emily Yagoda won 2 out of 5 rounds (Novice Level)
Saad Haroon and Adam Aldad won 2 out of 5 rounds (Novice Level)
Benjamin Casella and Madhi Bhalloo won 3 out of 5 rounds (Middle School Level)

Congratulations to the entire team! Thanks again to Mrs. Principe-Franco for accompanying the students!

[Thanks to Mrs. Principe-Franco and Brooke Schwartz for some of the photos.]

Wheatley’s Science Olympiad Team Competes in Regional Science Olympiad!

Posted 15 February 2019

Filed under Academics, Competition, Student Clubs, Students

On Saturday, 2 February, 41 teams competed at the Nassau East Science Olympiad Regional. Wheatley’s Science Olympiad team finished 12th overall.

Top-10 performances for the competition included:

Chemistry Lab – 3rd – Karan Amin & Vedant Singh
Circuit Lab – 8th – Vedant Singh & Viraj Jayam
Codebusters – 10th – Kenton Wu, Sahill Jain, Ryan Wu
Designer Genes – Victor Li & Rebecca Sparacio
Disease Detectives – Sarah Hassan & Karen Li
Fermi Questions – Vedant Singh & Viraj Jayam
Fossils – 6th – Hitangee Jain & Victor Li
Geologic Mapping – 1st – Karan Amin & Victor Li
Herpetology – 7th – Victor Li & Hitangee Jain
Mission Possible – 10th – Karen Li & Hitangee Jain
Thermodynamics – 2nd – Vedant Singh & Karen Li

Other performance of note:

Dynamic Planet – 12th – Kristin Zachariah & Anya Chabria

Congratulations to the students on their efforts! Thanks to Mr. Paulson and Mr. Gottlieb, the club advisors, for spending the day with the students!

[Thanks to Mr. Paulson for the photos!]

Wheatley’s Brainstormers Are Back in Business!

Posted 12 February 2019

Filed under Academics, Competition, Student Clubs, Students

On Saturday, February 9th, The Wheatley School’s Brainstormers Club competed in The National History Bee & Bowl’s Long Island Winter Tournament at Freeport High School. In the tournament, members from the Brainstormers Club participated in several competitions, including the History Bowl (group competition), the History Bee (individual competition), the United States History Bee (Qualifying Exam), and the United States Geography Olympiad (Qualifying Exam).

History Bowl Results

In the History Bowl, the Junior Varsity Team, consisting of Frederick Lin, maintained a 3-2 record in the tournament and went on to be awarded the Runner-Up (second-place) award for the Junior Varsity Division in the playoffs. The Varsity Team, consisting of Rahul Ajmera, Padraig Brady, Peter Cuomo, and James Li, demonstrated a strong effort—maintaining a 2-3 record in the tournament—but did not advance to playoffs.

History Bee Results

In the History Bee, Frederick Lin advanced to the playoffs and was awarded a Silver Medal (second place) for the Junior Varsity Division. Frederick Lin qualified to advance to the National History Bee & Bowl National Tournament hosted at Arlington, Virginia & Washington D.C. in April 2019. At the moment, scores are still being examined for the club’s performance in the United States History Bee and United States Geography Olympiad.

A special thanks to Club Advisor John Beleckas for his work in preparing our outstanding Brainstormers for the tournament. A huge thank you as well to Joseph Crotty for accompanying the students and preparing the write-up!

Mr. Crotty, Padraig, Peter, James, Rahul and Frederick

Students Succeed at 36th Annual Nassau Mathematics Tournament!

Posted 6 February 2019

Filed under Academics, Competition, Student Clubs, Student Performances, Students

On Friday, 1 February, 19 Wheatley students competed in the Nassau Mathematics Tournament (NMT) at SUNY College at Old Westbury. This one-day event is open to all high schools (both public and private) in Nassau County. Generally, about 40 schools send students to participate in this competition.

The “Senior” team earned 5th Place overall! This team was comprised of:

Karen Li
Vedant Singh
Trenton Wong
Kenton Wu
Brandon Zhu

Two of our students had outstanding individual results:

Brandon Zhu came in 1st overall
Vedant Singh finished in 5th place overall

Our “Junior” team brought home 8th Place Honors overall. This team consisted of

Manav Bansal
Viraj Jayam
Victor Li
Justin Wong
Ryan Wu

We also had excellent individual contests:

Ryan Wu finished in 9th place

Valued efforts were also turned in by Adam Aldad, Richard Attardi, Sahil Jain, Siddhant Jain, Jason Koty, Armaan Pahuja, Neil Shah, and Avinash Reddy.

A big “thank you” to our Mathletes Advisor, John Beleckas. Special thanks to our Mathematics Chair Robert Teseo and to NCIML President Kevin Myers for making this event possible.

[Thank you to Mr. Beleckas and Dr. Teseo for the write-up and photos!]

AP Biology Students Conduct Human Mitochondrial Sequencing Lab at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory!

Posted 1 February 2019

Filed under Academics, Students

On Thursday, our AP Biology students (in Mrs. DeAngelo’s and Ms. Schwartz’s classes) headed over to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to conduct a Human Mitochondrial Sequencing as part of their evolution unit. They extracted DNA from mitochondria in their cheek cells and were guided on how to amplify a small region of their own mitochondrial DNA by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and use the product as a template for DNA cycle sequencing.

The students obtain their “finished” sequence through the DNALC Internet site. Computer analysis of the data will be performed at school in the coming weeks using the DNALC’s bioinformatics tool “Sequence Server.” This lab examines Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) in the human mitochondrial genome and uses it as the basis for understanding human evolution and worldwide migration patterns.

Thank you to Mrs. DeAngelo for the write-up