Students gain experience in engineering

Last week, Lind-Ritzville High School Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Club members were given the opportunity to increase their experience in the discipline of engineering in the best way the world knows how: through hands on experimentation motivated by competition.

The first opportunity provided to the students was the seventh annual Bi-County STEM Challenge in Odessa. Each year, six schools from Lincoln and Adams County converge to participate in impromptu tasks that put their engineering and teamwork skills to the test.

For the second time in the last three years, Lind-Ritzville STEM Club took home the “Golden Beaker”, meaning they placed first in the competition.

Seven LRHS students contributed their engineering skills to the competition, including Hawk Busayok, Cinthia Guizar, Sharon Anderson, Emily Rosen, Samuele Bartolato, Morgan Lane, and Emma Aldrich.

As in previous years, the students were faced with two challenges. The first challenge was the “mixer”, in which students grouped themselves with students from other schools. The objective was to build a bridge spanning twenty centimeters with the use of only Popsicle sticks that could hold the most amount of weight possible.

While several groups were able to construct a make-shift bridge, only one bridge could support an additional weight.

Creativity was necessary for this aspect of the competition. Guizar explains, “My favorite part of the STEM challenge was when we were building the Popsicle bridge. I liked being challenged and looking for alternate ways to set up.”

The second half of the competition required students to regroup with their schools to build a Rube Goldberg machine. Named after the cartoon artist and inventor, a Rube Goldberg machine is a contraption that utilizes a chain reaction of complex energy transformations to achieve a simple task.

The objective of the competition was to construct a Rube Goldberg with the most amount of energy transformations and transfers as possible, given a list of various supplies.

Anderson expands on the concept of creativity in engineering, “Creativity is important in the engineering process because you have to have multiple ideas to test and then maybe combine together ideas to meet your goal.”

Upon designing, failing, and redesigning, Anderson continues, “Ultimately, the more ideas you have about the thing you are engineering, the more chances you have for improvement on it.”

Despite receiving exactly the same starting materials, each team creatively devised different energy transformations for their chain reactions.

Like Anderson, Rosen notes the team’s creativity in relation to their success: “Our team created a completely different idea than most groups and the outcome was unique.”

“I had a lot of fun at the STEM Challenge. It was cool to see all of the ideas people had,” Anderson adds.

The second opportunity to gain experience in engineering came on the day following the Bi-County STEM Challenge when Guizar, Rosen, and Aldrich traveled to the University of Idaho (U of I) for their annual Women in Engineering Day.

As explained on their website, the workshop “provides the opportunity for students to explore future career possibilities through hands-on activities, exposure to current engineering students, faculty, and professionals, as well as interaction with specific engineering disciplines.”

The workshop helped Guizar recognize the impact of engineers in society. She explains, “I never really thought about how engineers help, but with the [U of I] experiment I learned that it’s much more than just building…”

“It’s kind of like being a doctor and trying to find a cure,” Guizar adds.

Interested in architectural engineering, Rosen appreciated the opportunity to be hands-on. “I want to become an engineer,” she says, “because it would be challenging and I enjoy building and creating things.”

“I might pursue a career in engineering because I like to solve problems and I like the satisfaction of when something I made or helped make works. There are a lot of components in engineering that meet my interests,” Anderson says of the role of engineering in her future.

She finishes, “That’s another reason why I enjoyed the STEM Challenge: it was a taste of something I’d like to do when I get older.”