Math whiz Sarah Vaden, 16, hopes to patent her drum kit invention but knows it might be too late.

Daniel Lin, 15, helped a team design a basketball-shooting robot that competed this spring in an international competition. The robot shot a bit high, but probably could beat Shaq at the foul line.

Daniel attends Blacksburg High School. Sarah attends the Roanoke Valley Governor's School for Science and Technology and Staunton River High School. Each is sharper than a diamond-ground blade. But neither seems to fit the smart-kid "creeps and nerds" stereotype playfully bemoaned by Pattie Cook. Cook is regional director for FIRST, a New Hampshire-based organization founded in 1989 by inventor Dean Kamen to motivate young people to consider careers in math, science, engineering and other fields.

Sarah and Daniel and their whip-smart peers, including Daniel's mates on the Hokie Guard robotics team, suggest such efforts might be working. On the other hand, neither Daniel, whose father, Tao Lin, is a math professor at Virginia Tech, nor Sarah needed coaxing to be interested in math and science.

In recent decades, voluminous studies, watchdogs and politicians have decried national deficiencies in math and science education. Soothsayers have warned that the United States is doomed to experience a quality-of-life downturn because too few young people seem interested in the fields of science and engineering. Thomas Friedman's national best-seller, "The World is Flat," quoted a Silicon Valley entrepreneur: "I dare you to find an 11-year-old in America who wants to be an engineer today. We've turned down the ambition level."

Friedman wrote, "The sky is not falling today, but it might be in 15 or 20 years if we don't change our ways, and all signs are that we are not changing, especially in our public schools."

The studies declare that kids from other countries are better-educated in math and science and more ambitious and driven than America's youth.

Not Sarah Vaden. Sarah discovered in second grade that she loved math. But she's no nerdy bookworm. Sarah runs track, plays drums and kayaks the coves of Smith Mountain Lake.

Daniel said math and science have long interested him more than subjects involving less exactitude.

"Science is a lot easier for me than liberal arts," said Daniel. "In science, either you're right or you're wrong. In liberal arts, you can debate something for years."

For Dewey Spangler, there's no debate about Sarah's smarts.

Spangler, who has a master's degree in civil engineering from Virginia Tech, is an instructor of math, computer science and fundamentals of research at the Roanoke Valley Governor's School. He was Sarah's research instructor this year. "Sarah demonstrates the maturity, intellect and attitude of a professional practitioner," said Spangler. "She is certainly destined to make serious contributions in the fields of engineering and physics."

Even Sarah's parents, Dave and Carmel, are a bit awed by their offspring's aptitudes and accomplishments, including a fourth-place award in the engineering category at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in May. She will serve an internship this summer with NASA.

"I don't think she realizes the opportunities in front of her," said Dave Vaden.

Each year, the Intel ISEF holds a pre-college science fair that attracts nearly 1,500 students from more than 40 countries.

Sarah's project was titled "The Design and Optimization of a Pitch Elevator and Its Effect on the Oscillation Frequencies of a Membraphone." In lay terms, Sarah's research project at the Governor's School produced a deceptively simple device that promises to simplify and accelerate for percussionists the process of adjusting the pitch of pitch-dependent drums.

During a recent interview in the basement of her home at Smith Mountain Lake, Sarah demonstrated on her Tama drum kit how her pneumatic pitch elevation pedal works. By depressing modified bass drum pedals that pump air into her toms, Sarah quickly adjusted their pitch. She could change the pitch even while playing.

She and her parents haven't initiated a patent request and they worry that the pedal has been openly demonstrated at science fairs, including the ISEF. Her brother, Sam, might tackle the patent process this summer.

Meanwhile, in Christiansburg, several members of the Hokie Guard robotics team and teacher Michael Collver talked about the value of participating in this year's FIRST Robotics competition.

In six weeks, the team had to design and build a rudimentary robot that could shoot Nerf basketballs.

The yearlong robotics course results from a collaboration between Montgomery Public Schools and the Virginia Tech College of Education.

"This class changes people," said Kiefer Beelman, 16, who attends Christiansburg High School.

"It's more hands-on than school," said Bobby Jaeger, 15, a student at Blacksburg High School. "FIRST produces a lot of engineers."

Tao Lin said the robotics class has taught Daniel practical skills and practical applications for math.

"I don't know whether this robot class will make Daniel become an engineer needed by this country, but I am sure that his experience in this class has given him a good starting point if he ever decides to pursue such a wonderful career," Tao Lin said.

Brenda Brand, assistant professor of science education at Virginia Tech, said the robotics course also has attracted girls -- including a few who signed up accidentally but became hooked.

"I had a girl say, 'I used to be a girlie girl before I took this class.' "