Academy senior finds ballet + science = award

Lisa Sciortino

Thursday, March 21, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Ever notice how ballerinas seem to defy gravity with their midair jumps and spins?

Megan Riggs did.

"To find out what was really going on," the Las Vegas Academy senior studied her fellow dance class members in action last year and turned her findings into an award-winning science project.

"Balance and Placement" examined the role physics plays in various dance movements.

The crux of Megan's project focused on how long ballet and modern dancers "were able to balance in different positions, and looking at their placement and where their center of mass falls," she explains.

The project recently made it to the semifinals of the 55th annual Westinghouse Science Talent Search, where Megan was the only student representing Nevada.

The project also took top honors overall and in the physics category at last year's Southern Nevada Science and Engineering Fair. She also presented it at the International Science Fair in Canada.

The honors came as no surprise to Megan's former physics teacher, Eric Anderson, who says it's among the "top projects" he's seen.

"I was very enthusiastic about the idea of blending something that's traditionally nonscience with science," he says.

"Some of these leaps that seem to defy gravity are really done automatically by the dancers, according to the laws of physics."

Like a grand jete. "That's where you jump in the air and you turn and you land," explains 18-year-old Megan, a longtime ballet, modern and jazz dancer.

According to the laws of physics, this move can't occur, she says, "because you have to have something to make you turn, you have to push off of something."

Hard to believe science has never been Megan's best subject. If nothing else, the project turned out to be a big help to her dancing.

"I learned how the laws of physics are acting upon the different steps," she says. "I learned how to use that to my advantage instead of fighting against it."