This year’s freshmen have successfully begun a tradition of designing, building, and playing a working miniature golf course. The products of their work were displayed at an event that was held between 3-6 p.m. in the Tappan Gymnasium on Thursday after school, and was open to the public; all were invited to play a free golf course complete with turf, obstacles and even a rotating windmill.

“I find it very amazing that the school is able to do something like this, and I am surprised that the freshman class was able to build such a fine, entertaining work of art. I wish we had this opportunity last year,” sophomore Ben Thomas said.

The free three-hour golfing event was the finale of an elaborate construction process for the freshman class. Students formulated designs for courses in Geometry I classes, and then each Physics I class was assigned one design to build. Freshman Ariane Chacker-Borrut said that she enjoyed the experience of working on the project.

“We used foam, and turf, and plywood, and any other materials that we brought into class,” Chacker-Borrut said. “It’s an engineering project; it’s based off of physics and math.”

There was room for this additional project in the physics curriculum because physics students took their physics final prior to the 2015 Introductory Physics MCAS, which occurred on June 8 and 9. The project was funded by a grant procured by the one of the BHS 2020 groups, which has been working to integrate project-based learning into their curriculums for the past two years. According to math teacher Ron Taylor, the goal is to demonstrate to students how combining the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math can improve students’ learning.

The event was facilitated by junior mentors. According to one of them, junior Arthur Chen, a few dozen people came.

“I think we could have done a better job of telling the community that it was coming,” physics teacher Aubrey Love said. “I think we talked about it a little too late in terms of putting out the word.”

Despite the relatively low turnout, a large amount of effort went into the creation of the golf course. Some courses included the involvement of a sculpture class to create artistic designs. Love expects that future years will have a hard time living up to the standards set this year.

“They turned out so well that we know that in future years they can see it, and so we’re going to try to beat that.”

Jacob Spiegel can be contacted at [email protected]