November 6, 1998

The 17th annual Duracell/NSTA Scholarship Competition is challenging even more students to power their imaginations this school year and is granting larger rewards to student winners offering prizes totaling over $160,000 in saving bonds.

Duracell has just announced that sixth graders are eligible to participate for the first time in the 1998-99 competition. This means all junior and seniors high school students can now enter the Duracell/NSTA Scholarship Competition as individuals or in pairs.

Awards are being expanded this year to recognize the high caliber of all 100 finalist entries. The competition's ten third place winners will now receive $3,000 savings bonds, the 24 fourth place winners will receive $1,000 saving bonds, and the 60 fifth place winners will receive $500 bonds.

Also new this year is Ask the Experts! email help from two volunteer engineers who will react to design problems posed by student inventors.

The competition's two first place awards are still $20,000 savings bonds and the four second place awards are $10,000 bonds. The first and second place student winners will be honored, along with their teachers and parents, at an awards ceremony held during the National Science Teachers Association's national convention in Boston next March. The six teachers sponsoring first and second place winners will receive $2,000 gift certificates for computers and related equipment.

How to Participate

To enter the Duracell/NSTA Scholarship Competition, sixth through twelfth grade students design and build devices which are educational, useful or entertaining, and powered by one or more DURACELL batteries. Judging is based on creativity, practically, energy efficiency of the invention, and clarity of the written description. Submissions are due at the NSTA by January 15, 1999.

For information about the Duracell/NSTA Scholarship Competition, call NSTA toll free at 1-888-255-4242 or check the WWW at: http://www.nsta.org/programs/duracell.shtml.

Ask the Experts! team members are Mark Yeary, a 1987 second place Duracell/NSTA Scholarship Competition winner with the Automatic Dice Roller who is completing a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, and Gordon Isleib, a design engineer and teacher who organizes final judging and runs Starter Kit workshops for The Duracell. They can be reached at <mbyeary@gte.net> or <dfzm70a@prodigy.com>.

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