Each month, Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School students are given the opportunity to compete in an engineering challenge. The goal of the challenge, according to school officials, is to give students an opportunity to experience the work process of engineering a design challenge, and to collaborate with one another to get the job done well, in a different competition than the yearly science fair.
The students are issued a design challenge at the meet. Working in teams of two or three, they have 45 minutes to complete the task. Then the designs are evaluated to determine the meet winners.
The November challenge was to create a device that could be used to unscrew an incandescent light bulb and replace it with a compact fluorescent light bulb. A light fixture was suspended from a 10-foot ceiling and the teams were timed to see how long it took them to exchange the bulbs using their devices. The fastest time determined the winners.
First place went to Chris Aring, Zach Bresnick, and Connor Downing (14.2 seconds); second place to Eli Hanschka, Tim Roberts, and Russell Shapiro (15.3 seconds); and third place to Emily Moore, Elizabeth O’Brien, and David Packer (38.7 seconds).
All members of winning teams accumulate points over the season and are eligible to become grand winners of the challenge at the end of the school year.