Local students to participate in WQED competition
Middle school students in the Canon-McMillan School District as well as students representing the Chartiers-Houston Community Library will be among those participating in a virtual engineering competition.
For the 15 school districts involved, WQED’s 13th Design Lives Here competition is scheduled for March 29. There also will be students from three libraries involved in a similar competition on April 21.
Design Lives Here is aimed at encouraging kids to learn more about and consider the value of a profession in engineering.
“The students learn about the design process, and they learn to work on a team, and work on their skills to present,” explained Gwen Anderson, WQED’s manager of Design Lives Here.
This year’s challenge involves constructing a hover craft – an air-cushion vehicle that can travel over land, water, and other surfaces. The students have about 45 minutes to assemble their hovercraft using a CD, straw, a three-inch piece of packing foam, a balloon, duct tape, rubber band, and a barbecue skewer.
The hovercraft will then be tested to see how far it will go on a smooth surface with methods such as floating a disk on a cushion of air and playing games like air hockey.
“The students submit videos of their inventions, and we have engineers review and choose the winner for their inventions,” Anderson said. “They all have to work together, and they have to respect each other’s ideas. It’s pretty fun to watch them. When they test it, and it doesn’t work, they have to go back and redesign it. To see what they come back with is pretty awesome.”
Canonsburg Middle School and Cecil Intermediate School are participating, and two youths from Houston will represent Chartiers-Houston Community Library.
There will be 827 students in grades five through eight taking part in this year’s competition.
The winning teams receive prizes related to STEM.
Design Lives Here is a semester-long engineering initiative that equips teachers and students to participate in engineering activities within their school or after-school program. Professional engineers serve as mentors to students throughout the year.