Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Her name’s a planet
MIT honors 12-year-old Plantation student.
The latest award carried off by a precocious 12-year-old from Cooper City may be a little large to fit in a trophy case.
Minor Planet 33714, hurtling through space in the asteroid belt between Saturn and Jupiter, will soon be officially known as planet Sara Kaufman, in honor of a student at American Heritage School in Plantation.
“It’s pretty cool,” Sara said. “I’ve always had this dream of making my mark on the world, and leaving a legacy, and I feel like I’ve been able to do that in sixth grade, which is amazing,”
The name is a gift from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, which discovered the planet. When Sara snagged second place in the math category at the 7th Annual Broadcom Masters national competition in Washington, D.C. last October, the name of a planet came as part of the prize package, along with less exotic but more immediately useful awards such as $2,500 and an iPad.
But even the solar system has a bureaucracy, in this case, the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, which documents such things. So Sara will have to wait a bit for the honor to become official.
The paperwork has not yet landed there, and even after it does, it would require approval, said Gareth Williams, the organization’s secretary.
“Names proposed by discoverers are voted on,” Williams said. “If approved, the new names and accompanying citations are announced in the Minor Planet Circulars, published here at the Minor Planet Center.”
Minor Planet 33714 can’t be seen with the naked eye, and most people would probably call it an asteroid, since it’s distinct from such big-league planets as Jupiter, Mars and Mercury. A “substantial telescope and other specialized equipment is needed to see it,” Williams said.
Her award is a gift from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, which discovered the planet.
The Broadcom competition is regarded as the nation’s most prestigious science, technology, engineering and math competition for junior high school students. Of 2,499 applicants, Sara was one of 30 selected to compete, one of two Florida students invited. The other was Scott Tobin, of Port Orange, just south of Daytona Beach.
The finalists were picked for their science fair project. Sara made a wind tunnel out of a large PVC pipe and a leaf blower, used to test the sturdiness of four different roof designs on a doll-sized house. One design, with spires on the corners, stayed atop the house the longest. Sara came up with the design after talking with her mother, a former airline pilot, about airplane wing design.
“Sara is an all-around, outstanding student, and I expect to see more great things from her in the future,” said Anita LaTorre, the principal at Sara’s school.
Although the cash and iPad were nice, it’s her celestial namesake that’s the talk of her classmates at American Heritage. And her mother, Nadine Leonard, is proud.
“Oh, beaming, just beaming,” Leonard said. “Sara has virtually won every competition she has been a part of at the school level. But even if she didn’t win all these awards, just the person she is, she is my best friend. It’s just the two of us. She’s pretty special.”
Sara’s father, who died of cancer when she was 5, was a physicist from Argentina and Sara appears to have picked up his scientific prowess, Leonard said.
Sara speaks five languages, including Spanish and Portuguese, and she writes poetry, practices martial arts and plays guitar. She wants to attend MIT and combine a medical degree with robotics.
“Everyone who has helped me, whether it was at the school, or home, or even at the competitions, has contributed to where I am,” Sara said.
Currently, 21,109 of 503,850 numbered minor planets have names. And soon, assuming all goes well, there will be 21,110 named planets, including one called Sara Kaufman.