TOWAMENCIN- He may not be old enough for a PG-13 movie, and may not be tall enough for some rides on the boardwalk, but one student in the North Penn School District is on the academic ride of a lifetime- one that recently took him all the way to the White House.

As a twelve year old, Jonathan Okasinski is currently registered in ninth grade at Pennfield Middle School, but attends most of his classes at North Penn High School, whereas most students his age are in seventh grade. In doing so, he has created quite a name for himself as he has accomplished more than one would ever expect, recently meeting President Obama as part of a science project presentation.

Okasinski became interested in basic electronics and science before he entered the school system in kindergarten. As he tried to calculate simple formulas in his calculator, his mother quickly steered him away from the easy path. She began teaching him basic math skills and by the end of first grade Okasinski was learning multiplication, which made math come easily to him at school. In order to have his skills fulfilled, Okasinski’s mother worked to have him accelerated.

“I wanted to be accelerated and she made it happen, but it was definitely something that I wanted to do,” explained Okasinski. “Apparently, everybody thinks that it was her idea.”

Continuing to surpass the expectations of educators around him throughout his education at General Nash Elementary School, Okasinski began attending Pennfield Middle School for one period to take an Algebra 1 course while he was enrolled in sixth grade. After completing seventh grade, he finished a geometry course over the summer, which meant he was ready for Algebra 2. However, in order to receive credits for the course, Mr. Burt Hynes, principal of North Penn High School, recommended that Okasinski omit eighth grade and advance to ninth grade. Okasinski explained that he and his family decided it would be a beneficial progression in his academics since it was definitely something he wanted to do. As a result, he currently attends the high school for the first five periods of his school day and returns to Pennfield for two more class periods and M.O.L.P. (My Opportunity to Learn Period), which is similar to a study hall.

One might think a twelve year old would have a pretty hard time adapting to the high school; however, it’s been quite the opposite. Besides getting a little bit lost for the first week, Okasinski has been balancing homework, his science fair project, and extra-curricular activities extremely well.

Okasinski’s science fair project, which was a demonstration of quantum entanglement, recently earned him a trip to the White House with Broadcom as he worked his way through earlier fairs, which included ones in Montgomery County and Delaware Valley. Being one of thirty finalists, Okasinski was eager to present his project. He explained that quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which one could entangle two particles so a change of one particle would be instantaneously reflected to the other particle.

“There are all sorts of things you can do with [quantum entanglement], but it currently costs $10,000 to demonstrate,” explained Okasinski. “Therefore, people don’t have the exposure to it at, say, the high school level. You don’t have exposure to it until, say, college. I thought if I could bring the cost down to $1,000 that was reasonable enough for a demonstration or something like that to happen at the high school and so it’s more easily appreciated. I was not able to do it for less than $1,000 because I didn’t entirely finish my project. I didn’t finish the single processing section for my detectors. I was able to demonstrate entanglement, which was really neat.”

In order to fund such a project, Okasinski received support from various people and organizations. Mrs. Mower, a gifted support teacher at Pennfield Middle School, helped his family write a grant application to the North Penn School District Educational Foundation. After receiving a grant that covered most of the costs, Okasinski’s family paid the difference.

However, finding support wasn’t always an easy process as he was very young when he began the project.

“Finding mentors was really hard because I was eleven at the time I started the project. Entanglement was demonstrated at that time by universities and [I was] pretty much cold emailing people and asking them if [they would] help me. I don’t think many of them took me very seriously.”

In the end, Okasinski’s trip to the White House was topped off with a once in a lifetime experience: meeting President Barack Obama. Okasinski excitedly explained that after listening to the President’s speech, he shook his hand and stood next to him in a picture.

Although Okasinski’s demonstration was seen as a success by many, he intends to improve upon the project. He explained that it was a very rudimentary demonstration of entanglement and was presented with little data. One of his most significant problems was a sampling rate that updated once every thirty seconds. After having 48 hour runs, he only received about three data points.

Aside from Okasinski’s accomplishments associated with science fair, he is a member of a water polo team and a robotics club at North Montco, which works in partnership with North Penn School District. He explained that the club was co-founded by his mother and received a lot of assistance in order to be enacted.

“We had a lot of support from the [North Penn] School Board. It usually takes about two years to fund a club and they pushed it through in six months, which is very nice of the people on the current board to help expedite the process to get this going,” said Okasinski.

As a result, the robotics club is able to meet and start preparing for the competition. Okasinski explained that the team only has six weeks to design and build a robot within the weight limit of 120lbs that can take a three foot yoga ball, lob it over a five foot truss, catch it on the other side, and then throw it into a six foot goal. A challenge that complicated requires as much work in the preseason as the actual season presents. Okasinski explained that although the game is different each year, attending competitions to examine other teams’ solutions gives the team a partial answer. Knowing when to go from linear motion to rotary motion or when to use a pushing mechanism provides the robotics team a better understanding of how to create the robot. For Okasinski, the current situation of the robotics club has been ideal.

“There’s a Tuesday robot and a Thursday robot and we’re going to do a soccer match between them to get started with different mechanical and electrical concepts and the base of how it works,” explained Okasinski. “It’s been moving at a very fast pace and it’s quite exciting.”

As for the future, Okasinski hasn’t started to think about what college he plans to attend or what career he would like to pursue. However, after witnessing his talents, the colleges that turned him down when he was asking for support at the age of eleven may be chasing after him when it comes time for him to take the next step from North Penn High School.