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Show Campus Voice since 1902 Utah State University • Logan, Utah • www.aggietownsquare.com Students participate in Cache Valley Highland Garnet Today is Monday, 31, 2009 By BRENDON BUTLER staff writer Breaking News Japanese election upsets long-ruling conservative party. Page 2 Campus News USU students spend the night . -•>.. outside the TSC to ensure the purchase of tickets for the USU vs. Utah football game. Page 3 Features KELSEY CRANE, FRESHMAN IN BIOLOGY, demonstrates a sword dance at the Cache Celtic Festival and Highland Games Saturday. Crane is a fourtime U.S. champion and has placed third in the world for Scottish dancing. CODY G0CHN0UR photo Flowriding allows Utah residents a chance to surf locally. : .^ - £>. fee ... USU students participated in traditional Scottish sports and dances at the inaugural Cache Valley Highland Games, held at the American West Heritage Center Saturday. About 2,000 people, many wearing traditional kilts, gathered for a day of bag-piping, haggis eating, dancing, singing and Scottish feats of strength. Irish and Scottish style dancers and singers performed throughout the day, while on a nearby field men and women from across Utah tried their hands at various traditional Scottish games, which generally include throwing heavy objects such as rocks, iron objects and wooden tree trunks as far, high or accurately as possible. This year's Utah state championship was fought in the Weight Over Bar event, in which a 56-pound bell-shaped iron weight is heaved with only one arm over an ever-rising bar. Perhaps the most well-known event is the Caber Toss, in which a 16-foot tapered wooden pole weighing almost 100 pounds is picked up and thrown end over end for accuracy. Matt Rahmeyer, civil engineering junior, won first place even though he's only been throwing caber for three months. "The object is not how far you can throw it, it's accuracy," Rahmeyer said. "You actually hold the small end with the fat end up in the air, and you run in a straight line, and you turn it (end over end). You want the small end to fall directly away from you, and that's called pulling a noon." Rahmeyer said he practices with a Smithfield group called Sons of Thor. He likes participating in the games because it gives him a chance to connect with his roots, which are Scottish, Irish and Welch, Rahmeyer said. Anyone can sign up for the different games and give them a shot, he said, but there are many different divisions depending on gender, skill level and body weight. Heather Davis, first-year pre-psychology student, won the women's division for the Sheaf Toss by using a pitchfork to toss a 12-pound burlap bag up over an ever-rising bar. Her top height was 15 feet, she said. Davis said she was surprised slu1 did so well, because she first tried the event about eight Sports ies! ,/'•:•' Opinion A B O V E , R O B E R T W A R D U p , director of Research and Development Laboratories at ATK Launch Systems, speaks to students about rockets and energetic materials Friday as part of the Science Unwrapped series. Right, students from USU and surrounding middle schools watch a rocket launch after the lecture. CODY G0CHN0UR photos By RICHARD PERKINS staff writer "The permeation of music shouldn't deter any English majors from their vigilant quest of bagging a husband." Page 10 Off the Web We are dedicated to helping you get back on the road or making that routine checkup with no hasseL At M & M auto care we strive for integrity and fast efficent service. Let us ^ttake care of you and you car todayl 753-0211 Check out www.big-blue-bizxom [J See GAMES, page 4 Speaker series unwraps rocket science Page 15 wins at " tournament in El Paso, Texas, leave team undefeated. \ M-Page 6 days ago. She liked it so much, she plans to * compete again in two weeks at the Highland « Games event in Pocatello, Idaho, she said. * At the performance stage, a new USU stu-« dent named Kelsey Crane leaped with pointed toes to fiddle, flute, bagpipe and drum -J music. Crane is a four-time U.S. champion iri£ Scottish dancing. Crane said she has entered { USU as a sophomore and will study biology J and family, consumer and human develop- J ment. She'd also like to teach Scottish danc- Jj ing in Cache Valley, she said. % Walking among the crowd with bagpipes £ and snare drums faintly audible in the * background, Andrew Ermer, sophomore in biology, said he came to the festival to enjoy Scottish tradition. Ermer said he picked up the bagpipe a few years ago inspired by his boss James Pitts at the USU Bug Lab. Ermer a said he plays the small pipes, which aren't as-*1 loud as the larger highland pipes and are better played indoors. The droning noise under *• the melody acts a lot like the bass player's = part in a rock band, he said. « Tressa Haderlie, senior studying family finance, traveled to Scotland this summer «! with a dozen USU students on a trip led by ."! photography teacher Craig Law. While in > Scotland they went to a real Highland Games. event held on the high school field in a small J town called Cupar, she said. It was a lot like j the Cache Valley festival, except there were ] more competitors at the Scottish games, ;-j she said. Many of the photos taken by Law's ^ students will be exhibited in the Tippetts "j Gallery in the Chase Fine Arts Center. The i exhibit opens Friday, Sept. 4, from 7 to 9 p.mt Festival Director Dianne Siegfreid said ? Scottish roots run deep in Cache Valley. A 5 trapper named Ephraim Logan lived in the 'm area in 1824 and attended the mountain mat* rendezvous in 1825, where trappers traded % pelts and furs. He traded with the Shoshone 8 Indians and it may have been the Shoshone { who named the Logan river after him, * Siegfreid said. When the first pioneer settlerj arrived years later, they named their first 5 settlement after the Logan river. The name Logan is a Scottish clan name, Robert Wardle, director of Research and Development Laboratories at ATK Launch Systems, explained the principles of space flight propulsion to hundreds of community members and students. The eager audience filled the seats and spilled over into the aisles of the lecture hall. The event was hosted by the College of Science as part of "Science Unwrapped," a lecture series that kicked off in February. Mary-Ann Muffoletto, public relations specialist for the College of Science, said, "Our goal is to provide the community with an entertaining opportunity to learn about science." The lecture was titled "Rockets and Energetic Materials: Spaceflights from Goddard to Ares." Wardle began by saying, "By doing this, I am categorizing myself as a nerd and a rocket scientist." Then he proceeded to joke about rocket scientists. He kept the lecture fresh with demonstrations, interesting facts and his passion for rocket history. Wardle mentioned that the Saturn V, a moon rocket, put out 8.7 million pounds of thrust to get the astronauts to the moon, but with less computing power than a four-function calculator. The launch countdown began as part of a 1930s movie, Wardle said. "We didn't even invent the countdown," he said. "Hollywood did." The Russians later followed suit and adopted a launch countdown in more recent years. Before jumping to technical rocket burn profiles, he also said the space race was "a race between the German scientists the Americans took and the German scientists that the Russians took." In later years, the scientists were taken to Mexico so they could cross and become official immigrants. Much of Wardle s work has been "the dream of an 11-year-old: to design things that blow up and go really fast." As a chemist at ATK, he has worked on the chemistry of rocket propellant, which he described as having the consistency of a pencil eraser. ee ROCKETS, page 3 |