Dozens of treats flew through the air during the annual Invention Challenge at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The 25th Invention Challenge at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which welcomed more than 200 students to compete using homemade devices, was a hit this year. Literally.
That’s because the competition on Friday, Dec. 6, was to build an automated machine that, within 60 seconds, drops 50 chocolate-coated-peanut candies over an obstacle and a triangular Plexiglas container 16 feet (5 meters) away. I will launch. . Teachers, parents, and JPL employees watched the “Peanut Candy Toss Contest” by chance, some of them eating ammunition.
21 teams of students from Los Angeles and Orange County middle and high schools took to catapults, slingshots, flywheels, springs and massive rubber bands. There was a lot of PVC piping. A giant blue bunny-shaped device uses an air compressor to scoop candy out of its nose, while other entries rely on leaf blowers and vacuums.
Some were more successful than others. Ultimately, it was an old-school design that won first place for the Santa Monica High School team: a modified crossbow.
“I tried to come up with something that was historically tried and true,” said Steele Winterer, a senior on the initial design team. Like his peers, Steele is involved in the school’s engineering program and helped build the device during class. He described the process as “nervous”, “messy” and “unorganized”, but each found a role as the design improved.
Second and third place went to teams from Oakwood School in North Hollywood, which both took the fireline approach, using four parallel wooden instruments, one student per instrument firing one after the other. used to
Two regional invention challenges held last month at Costa Mesa High School and Augustus Hawkins High School narrowed the field to 21 teams invited to JPL’s final event. In the finals, three JPL-sponsored teams from out-of-state schools and two teams consisting of adult engineers faced off in a parallel competition. In this second competition group, retired JPL engineer Alan DeWalt took first place, followed by Boston Charter School of Science in second place, and Centaurs High School in Colorado in third place.
Held since 1998 (with a two-year hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic), the competition was designed by JPL mechanical engineer Paul McNeil to inspire students to discover a love of building things and solving problems. Teams of students spend months designing, building, and testing their devices to try to win a new challenge that MacNeal comes up with each year.
“When the student teams come to the finals, they’re just as engaged as the engineers are in the work we do here at JPL,” McNeil said. “It’s engineering for the joy of it. It’s problem solving but it’s also team building. And it’s unique because Rules change every year. Student teams get to see JPL engineering teams compete side-by-side. I started this contest to show students that engineering can be fun!
The event is supported by dozens of JPL volunteers, managed by NASA’s Caltech in Pasadena.
Melissa Palmer
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
626-314-4928
melissa.pamer@jpl.nasa.gov
2024-166