The new cool

Overview: That Monday afternoon, in high-school gyms across America, kids were battling for the only glory American culture seems to want to dispense to the young these days: sports glory. But at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California, in a gear-cluttered classroom, a different type of "cool" was brewing. A physics teacher with a dream-the first public high-school teacher ever to win a MacArthur Genius Award -- had rounded up a band of high-I.Q students who wanted to put their technical know-how to work. If you asked these brainiacs what the stakes were that first week of their…