Having Fun at Camp IQ

It looked about like any other summer camp. Boys were kicking soccer balls, skimming Frisbees and grousing about the lack of girls. Then the public address system crackled, and all 100 of them--two selected by each state --rushed to the recreation hall to hear Dr. Isidore Adler of the Goddard Space Flight Center discuss the problems of mapping the moon.

At question time, the long-haired youths in jeans and sneakers fired away: Is the fission theory of the moon's origin the most powerful one? Is there life on other planets? ("I don't believe in UFOs," said Dr. Adler, "but I'd be astounded if there was not life in some other solar system.")

This is a unique institution called the National Youth Science Camp, where 100 of the nation's brightest 16-to 18-year-old male science students (average IQ: 130-plus) gather for a free three weeks of serious talk and relaxation. West Virginia originally founded the camp in the Monongahela National Forest, about 50 miles from the nearest sizable town, partly to enhance the state's backward image (annual cost: $80,000). After ten summers, the 15-acre camp has become a nationally respected meeting ground for young talent. IBM lends computer equipment; the nearby National Radio Astronomy Observatory provides lecturers. The counselors are experts in such specialties as FORTRAN and high polymers.

Every morning, the campers get up at 7:45, salute the flag and start hearing lectures, two to four a day. In addition, some 50 students are giving seminars on their own pet projects. Among them: micropaleontology and the effects of high-energy radiation on biochemical substances.

Almost everything at the camp is geared to study. A class in shop teaches the grinding of telescope lenses. Instead of just whacking at the local bugs commonly called "no-see-ums," the campers scrutinize them under microscopes and discover that they are of the genus Culicoides. Even practical jokes are on the intellectual side. On one occasion, campers made a listening device out of materials found in the crafts shop and bugged the potbellied stove in the camp director's office.

Much of the value of the camp comes not from the subjects taught, however, but simply from the encounter with the other campers. Says Director Joseph M. Hutchison Jr., a professor at West Virginia University: "For the first time, many of the boys meet intellectual equals of their own age. Some even confess they're not as smart as they thought they were."

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