With the start of the COVID pandemic, junior Oren Pipano was unable to leave his house and play soccer, and he found others who shared similar problems. He recounts, “I learned that less than a quarter of middle schoolers participate in physical activity every day. I also read that American students are falling behind world averages in science literacy. As someone who has a younger brother who is a middle school student, I realized that something had to be done.”
His solution was creating the app Science in Motion, for which he placed second in Dwight Evans’ 2023 Congressional App Challenge representing the 3rd District of Pennsylvania. His app, targeted towards middle school students, teaches kids science while giving them sport-specific exercises for basketball, soccer, and running. It gives the user a series of exercises specific to the sport they choose, then the app explains different physics, chemistry, or biology concepts behind the physical activity they just did. “A basketball drill that involves dribbling the ball may link to a science fact about Newton’s Laws of Motion. A soccer drill may include a lesson about the density of the ball. Both the activities and science facts are randomized so that someone can play multiple times and get a different experience each time,” Oren explains.
With his app being made before he heard of the competition, it was a bit of a struggle to rewrite the code to make it submitable to the competition. Other than that minor issue, he spent most of his preparation time practicing his presentation: “I was preparing by just practicing like any presentation for a school project and just trying to go through everything and trying to make it flow nicely.”
The official competition took place Monday, December 18th, 2023 at Penn. Oren said his favorite part of the whole competition day was showing off his app. “The way I did my presentation, I tried to include a lot of people so they could decide where they wanted to go in the app. I think my favorite moment was getting people to be actually involved with the app that was designed for the community.”
