Three high school students team with NASA to solve spaceship problem

A Massachusetts high school science teacher recently put his three best students on a special assignment. They were told to imagine a world where some sort of spacecraft was hurtling toward Earth, and that it was up to them to figure out how they would record the event while onboard a separate aircraft.

The three students eventually put their heads together and came up with a way of doing what the teacher said. Then, the plot twist occurs, and the teacher is revealed to be a representative from NASA. He then took the students to Japan, and they implemented their solution to the problem. They even got to board a DC-8 and actually took photos of the Hayabusa spacecraft.

Sounds like some children’s story, doesn’t it? Like any children’s story, there is a distinct moral: Scientific problems can always be solved by kids.

Seriously. I would be willing to bet that if Steve Jobs were to give a group of smart high schoolers an assignment to create a better iPhone, they would have come up with a more decent version of the iPhone 4. Perhaps they could have figured out why it loses reception if you hold it a certain way.