A special thanks to Mr. Lew Smith for the below press release:

PRESS RELEASE, April, 1996.

LEIGH HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS EXCEL
AT THE 1996 SANTA CLARA COUNTY SCIENCE FAIR

At the April 6 Awards Ceremony of the 1996 Santa Clara Valley Science and Engineering Fair, fourteen of Leigh High School’s science students shared 27 awards and distinctions including more than $250 cash. Further, Leigh High School was awarded the Thomas Whitney Foundation award of one-thousand dollars to the science department. Junior Paul Saitta led with the Grand Prize Award for his engineering project A Simple Three Axis Variable-Mission Simulator. This is the third year in a row that Paul has taken the grand prize and earned the Whitney award for Leigh.
 
Winners include:

Sumedha Garud  The Effect of Environment on Test Performance
 SCVSEF 1st Place, and US Army certificate
Paul Saitta   A Simple Three- Axis Variable-Mission Simulator.
 SCVSEF 1st and Grand Prize and trip to the International Science Fair,
  USAF 1st place certificate, US Army medallion and $50 bond, Whitney Foundation $250.
Uyen Ngo Properties of Capillarity
 SCVSEF 2nd Place
Mike Simonovich Magnetohydrodynamic Pump
 SCVSEF Honorable Mention, Junior Engineering Technical Society Certificate,
 NASA Ames Research Certificate
Laurel Julian The Sweet Spot of a Tennis Racket
 Society of Women Engineers Certificate and $10.
Dave Kieu Spark Length and Electrode Diameter
 SCVSEF Honorable Mention
James Sheldon Computer Model of the Ozone Layer
 SCVSEF Honorable Mention
Jacob Verhoven Wind Erosion and Tree Lines
 SCVSEF 1st Place, SCV Water District $50 bond,
 State Science Fair Teacher of the Year Sponsored award of $20
Brett Lockyer Acoustical Properties of Selected Materials
 SCVSEF !st Place, American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air Conditioning 3rd place and $50,
 California Association of Professional Scientists plaque and $100 bond, US Navy Certificate and Calculator,
 Varian Associates cash award.
Danny Bingham and Mike Chen    The Effects of Spin on a Curve Ball
 SCVSEF Honorable Mention

Awards for technical writing went to:
William Rule Physics of the Roller Coaster
 SCVSEF 2nd
Bridget Radney The Physics of Martial Arts
 SCVSEF 2nd
Heather Reed Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
 SCVSEF Honorable Mention