The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Photograph courtesy of Felix Eisenhauer

Fourteen-year-old Felix Eisenhauer spent the first two weeks of school studying leaf fossils deposited on a Denver, Colorado forest floor 50 million years ago.

Fremont student makes rainforest his classroom

By Justin Berton

At the same time his peers at Fremont High School were studying science in a classroom, Felix Eisenhauer, 14, was dangling from a cord 55 meters in the air studying a single leaf attached to an oak tree somewhere in a rain forest just outside Forks, Wash.

He did, eventually, come down.

Eisenhauer is just one of 25 students selected from around the world to participate in a unique science curriculum sponsored by the NASA Ames Research Center called JASON Project X: Rain Forests--A Wet and Wild Adventure.

The JASON program sends the students--along with film crews, Web masters and photographers--around the world to research the unique biology that lives inside rain forests. Through technology called "telepresence," the program hopes to bring places such as the Peruvian Amazon into classrooms and provide a fun--if not unique--approach to learning science.

Two weeks ago, Eisenhauer was cleared to travel with a group of five students through three states in 10 days, in search of biological rarities.

"I was interested in science and this sounded like a great opportunity to go out and see what it was like," Eisenhauer said.

Eisenhauer did his fair share of forest hopping: He visited the Institute for Exploration in Mystic, Conn., then shot over to the Denver Museum of Natural History to study fossil rainforest specimens, and then into the Olympic National Park in Washington.

In Colorado, Eisenhauer said he did some of his most intriguing work. In a rainforest outside of Denver, the team did fossil excavation. The leaf fossils were believed to have been be swept into the forest 50 million years ago by a massive flood that lasted a few days.

The result is a rainforest floor carpeted with a four-inch-thick layer of 50-million-year-old leaves.

Eisenhauer was in eighth grade when the application process began. The process included writing a few essays, two interviews, and beating out about 1,200 competitors.

"Felix was recognized by teachers for his 3.7 GPA, musical talents as a concert pianist, and for his science skill," said project coordinator Lisa Marie Gonzales.

Now that he is back in Sunnyvale--and on the ground--Felix will continue to work with the JASON project, but out of his home. He's full of information and ready to share it with his peers--his teachers, that is.

"I'd tell teachers to do more hands-on stuff," he said. "Cut the text stuff."

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, September 30, 1998.
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