January Engineering Challenge Results

Each month, our students will have the opportunity to compete in our after-school Engineering Challenge.

The goals of the Challenge include:

  1. providing students an opportunity to experience authentically and firsthand the process of engineering as they work as engineers to complete a design challenge
  2. providing students an opportunity to work as a group to collaborate and communicate to achieve a common goal
  3. providing students an opportunity to compete as an academic team in a different type of competition than our yearly science fair, thus expanding the opportunitites for students to gain recognition for their accomplishments in science and related STEM disciplines.

The January Challenge was to create a working fan.  Students were provided motors, materials to make blades, and support stands and clamps with which to create their fans.  The students then used an anemometer to determine the wind speed, and the winners were decided by determining which fans generated the fastest wind speed.  This month we had a lot of ties, but the closeness of the resulting speeds generated a lot of excitement during the evaluation time.  The winners are listed below.

Thank you to Anna Cotton (Alt Ed Science), Dana Munn (Science), Michael Lavers (Math), and Chris Connors (Art) for working with me as a team to plan and provide these opportunities.

–Natalie Munn