"Remember Sputnik? Everyone stopped and realized how far America had fallen behind," said Popular Mechanics Next Generation Award winner Kelydra Welcker, though at 18, she was looking forward more than she could possibly remember back. "One hunk of metal made the entire American public open their eyes."

With American high school seniors performing below the international average for 21 countries in math and science as that big ball of Cold War scientific innovation turns 50, top students and educators agreed today that even another Sputnik doesn't come along, there needs to be an ambitious plan to increase awareness of scientific education. The final panel of PM's 2007 Breakthrough Conference, titled "How to Save American Science," four panelists agreed that focusing on community, open-source technology and diversity of fields could boost not only the number of students going to graduate school--or graduating at all--but also the appeal of science as a field of study.

"People who create science clubs usually fail miserably because they're nerds who feel a love of science is all it takes to get people involved in this," said Shawn Carlson a physicist and science writer who was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his approaches to science education. "When your parents beat you, when your parents get divorced, when your brother gets caught selling cocaine to federal agents, it's not going to be science that gets you involved--it's community."

Hod Lipson, a Breakthrough Award winner this year for his Fab at Home 3D printer that, well, makes most anything, agreed, saying the lessons he learned from the online, open-source expansion of his invention could be applied beyond the classroom. "Through the Internet, we can really reach a lot of people who are out of the education system--all the way from retired people with a lot of experience in engineering who don't know how to connect, to youth in different parts of the world who are far away from these systems."

At perhaps the most lively panel of the afternoon-long conference at New York's Hearst Tower, an impassioned back-and-forth ensued between panelists and audience members, including two internationally recognized high schoolers who bemoaned the lack of mentors and interest in research that they had seen in their travels with the top levels of young standouts. A lengthy discussion about finding ways to make women a more prevalent part of the American scientific community led to a conclusion that pervaded all conversations today: Expanding to multiple fields solves more problems than expanding volume.

"My goal is not universal science literacy, not because it wouldn't be a great idea, but because there's no way to do it," Carlson said. "If all the barriers are down, opportunity will present equal results."

And while New York biology teacher David Connelly got a laugh from the overflow crowd when he joked about a simple answer being increases in science teacher salaries, Carlson brought the room back down to Earth with yet another call to action: "It may sound extreme, but I think if we don't get serious to teach science to our children, we better get ready to teach Mandarin to our grandchildren."

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