Consistent Woodington team wins engineering challenge that puts a premium on problem solving
In a contest where tweaking can often tell the story, eighth-grade engineering students from Woodington Middle School stuck with the plan Wednesday in defending their title in the annual LCC STEM Challenge.
The team of Brayleigh Turner, Bailey Byrd and Blaire Howard rolled to the win with consistent top finishes over multiple heats as gravity-propelled model cars – designed and created by students at LCPS’s four middle schools – raced down an incline.
“It takes a lot of weight,” Brayleigh said. “In the front,” Blaire added as she and her teammates lubricated the axles and bearings of their two cars, which featured a radical wedge shape.
“This year I let the students choose what they wanted to do,” Woodington STEM teacher and team coach Robert Houston said. “I gave them the parameters, making sure they understood aerodynamics and making sure they understood drag, and then just gave them free rein. The students designed their own cars. They didn’t go to Google and look for a design. This is 100 percent their brainchild.”
Entries must meet maximum weight and width standards, but otherwise the look of the cars reflects students’ best hope. Using computer apps like Tinkercad in the design process, competitors “build” their cars with 3D printers at school or, if needed, at Lenoir Community College. LCC is in its fifth year of sponsoring the STEM Challenge and hosting it at its Aerospace and Advanced Manufacturing Center on NC 58.
Teams used trial runs and early heats Wednesday to spot problems and make adjustments, refining weight distribution or solving axle issues or going to the glue gun to make a body repair and improve aerodynamics.
“The whole idea is to learn that it’s okay to fail, to have them work through that whole design process,” said race coordinator Andrew Luppino, director of LCC’s Advanced Manufacturing & Industrial Systems
Technology Program. “If the design didn’t necessarily work as you thought it would, you go back and fix it and adjust it and finish with a product that will hopefully cross the line.”
A team from Rochelle Middle School Close finished close behind the Woodington winners, followed by the EB Frink team.
Woodington’s repeat win is the first for an all-girl team from the school. “I got some static last year from the girls for having an all-boy team,” Houston said. So, he made an adjustment.
Winners of the annual LCC STEM Challenge from Woodington Middle School are, from left, STEM teacher and coach Robert Houston, Bailey Byrd, Brayleigh Turner and Blaire Howard. The challenge tests students’ computer design and 3D printing skills in building gravity-propelled model cars that race down an incline.
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