We are happy and I think we have achieved more than we all thought some days ago. Now we need a cup of luck.

-Steffi (Team 27968 leader)

The purpose of Butterflies, On the Wings of Freedom is to give people around the world information about Butterflies. In addition to teaching the basics to showing multimedia videos and images, the site also offers interactivity through the butterflies forum. To accomplish the interactivity as well as multimedia, the site uses SSI, CGI, Javascript, MPEG video, and Java in addition to the widely used standards of HTML and GIFs or JPEGs for images on the web. Compatibility remains as the site is also tested with the most common browsers used today, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator 4.

The main web design of the site, lead by Rhomel Chinsio, uses the full power of HTML bringing a nice layout for the site as information and multimedia is gathered by the other team members, Stefanie Jegelka and Puey Wei Tan. The information and research alone could not complete the much desired task of having the material viewed by anyone anywhere, but when the web and the research and information are fused together, it makes for a powerful combination. The power of information and research normally stored in books along with the accessibility of the internet makes for a source available to the whole world. This is quite an advantage over the book one wants at a local library but cannot read it because another person is in possesion of the book at the moment. The power of the internet allows for a single copy to be distributed to a virtually infinite amount of users. Now that the Team 27968 have completed their work to use this powerful combination, people all over the world can get more information to get a deeper view about butterflies. We tried to create a website which is quite different from other websites. For this reasons all photos and texts were produced by the team.

Between us, Rhomel, Stefanie and Puey, there are more differences than similarities. Differences in countries, continents, languages, age, gender and hobbies. What binds us together is our website, the aim to overcome the differences and the target to present the beauty of butterflies. But all of us wanted to create something new and show more than other butterfly websites.

Perhaps what is most amazing about this team is where each team member is located. Rhomel, living in the United States, Stefanie in Germany, and Puey located at Singapore is an out of the ordnary team that can be formed on ThinkQuest. All three members met without having a single clue as to what the other team members are like decided to work together simple because of the urge to be in the ThinkQuest program and to spread their work to the world. Each member has never seen, spoken to, or heard any of the other team members in person. They haven't called the other member on the telephone, or heard the other team members' voices. All each knew to start with was a hint of the other members' abilities. As time progressed, the team members learned more about each other but still probably less than how most people know their neigbors. The team's primary way of communication has been through email messages and ICQ. Before you lies what three strangers to each other, called Team 27968, have produced.

Rhomel Chinsio
Rhomel is currently 16 years old and one of the best teachers I know concerning computers. He is on his junior year at Mount Carmel High School in San Diego, California. His hobbies are programming, designing webpages, and playing the guitar to name a few. He is interested in computers and music as you can tell from his hobbies listed. He speaks English and is learning French. He also has played the Trumpet and sings in Choir at his Highschool. He is also in the Track team which I found out when things seem to be slow from him because he was away for the day at a Track Meet.

He is an experienced programmer with knowledge of HTML and Java script. He learned PERL for the website and after a lot of effort he succeeded in writing well-running CGI script. Although there were several difficulties and problems he didn't give up and solved them one after another and rewrote the script several times even when I sometimes really got nervous. Consequently he tried to achieve his aims. He also created the clear layout of the website. It was very important for him that our site should be different from others. Although I was not always happy with his suggestions he often convinced me at last and it turned out that he was right. I was happy about his growing interest in butterflies.

Stefanie Jegelka
Stefanie, her friends call her Steffi, is 17 years old and lives in Aichwald. This must be a very small village anywhere in the south of Germany, I couldn't find it on a map. She told me that she has finished year 11 on Moerike-Gymnasium. But they do not only do sports in German "gymnasiums", it seems to be a kind of high school. Besides German she speaks English and French and is learning Spanish, not to forget the strange Swabian dialect. When she is not working she listens to music or plays the flute in an orchestra, I believe. She also likes doing sports in a sports club and you can talk to her about the latest films. Besides loving the beauty of butterflies she is interested in science, languages and computers. She is also interested in other countries and wants to work internationally in her later job.

She is interested in other countries and seems to like difficulties, otherwise she wouldn't have looked for two partners from different continents. But I think she does not regret it when she looks at our website. Steffi was our butterfly specialist and enjoys photographing them. She seems to be very patient for photographing but waiting for mails she sometimes got nervous. Although I haven't dealt with butterflies before she succeeded to convince me that butterflies are a good topic and taught us a lot about them. She did photos with a raster electron microscope and the high speed shooting. She really must love children otherwise she wouldn't have struggled so much for the trick film. If you find some strange grammatical constructions in the texts, we are sorry for Steffi's special English which was friendly overlooked by us.

What I have noticed greatly about Steffi, being our team leader, is that she is extremely devoted to her work. Her endless amount of energy always expands to new ideas when we have finished things to our goals. It was through her devotion to butterflies that kept us on track and continueously working.

Puey Wei Tan
Puey is 14 years old and our youngest team member. He goes to the Anglo-Chinese High school in Singapore which is a day school. Puey speaks English and Chinese. He is fond of the "making it work" part of computers so he often reads computer hardware sites. Although he passes a lot of time at school he still has numerous hobbies like reading good old-fashioned book or websites, playing computer games, chatting and updating of computer related skills.

So he learned Java for our website and really impressed us with his results. He also loves nature and photographing, especially on Sentosa Island. He had some funny, creative ideas and was very informed for his age. Another task of him was to collect material.

Chandra Sanabaghatta
Chandra is a very busy manager. We are very happy and particularly grateful that we had her offer to get help for technical problems any time we needed. We tried to solve them ourselves but however, it is good if you can rely that there is always a last chance for help. She pointed us to professional literature and useful websites.

Detlef Lingner
Mr Lingner is a biology teacher on Moerike-Gymnasium in Esslingen and the father of three little children. It was easy for him to raise my interest for butterflies years ago - for caterpillars it took some more time. My aim to fascinate other students for these animals is surely owing to him. He mediated relations to technical colleges, universities and professors, for example the possibility of doing research with a raster electron microscope. He also gave us the possibility to use the computers and photo equipment of the school in the evenings and answered our special questions at the weekends and on holidays as well. He read some of our pages for correction.

After all I must admit honestly that our coach does not know very much about computers and electronics but has a unique, innate sense for the moment when I had reached my limits and when some words or a pizza was absolutely needed to give new food to the working morale.

We feel obliged to the following persons:

We thank Mr. Brennenstuhl who looks after the raster electron microscope in the Technical University in Esslingen that he introduced us so patiently to the technique and function of the raster electron microscope and placed several afternoons at our disposal. The raster electron microscope photos would not have been possible without him.

Thanks also to the DaimlerChrysler company, especially Dr. Gerhard Koenig who repeatedly made it possible to take high speed shootings of moths in an optimal way.

Thanks to Mr Prinz and Mr Abele for the professional support with the digitalization of the shooting.

We want to thank Prof. Varju of the Neurophysiological Institute of the University of Tuebingen for his scientific support, the introduction to the work with Hummingbird Hawkmoths and the permission to take shootings in the university.

Thanks to the butterfly house on Mainau Island (Germany), especially Dipl.-Ing. Gaby Schoengarth for the butterflies and the possibility to take beautiful photos.

Thanks as well to the butterfly house on Sentosa Island (Singapore) for the possibility to take wonderful photos.

Thanks to Sebastian van Doorn and Martina Schwarz van Doorn for the Java Applet.

Thanks to the team of the library of Stuttgart for support with literary research.

Thanks to Kevin King who gave us the working CGI scripts.

Thanks to Rhomel's computer not crashing.

Thanks to Klaus for helping Steffi get the German pages done.

Finally, we thank Advanced Networks for having the ThinkQuest program. We also thank them for the perfect organization, the good support and the whole ThinkQuest program.