Wilbur wins "Junk Wars" Science Challenge trophy

On May 4, eight schools from the Bi-County joined Odessa for the second annual Bi-County Science Challenge. Odessa, Wilbur, Davenport, Liberty, Lind, Sprague, Reardan, and Harrington arrived at the Odessa school multipurpose room at 9 a.m. to compete in the “Junkyard Wars.” All other school districts in the Bi-County were invited but due to various reasons were not able to attend. The schools that did attend each brought a team of six students to compete against the other schools for the traveling trophy. Team Odessa consisted of Lexi Watkins, Kira Powell, Hailey Williams, Justin Hunt, Justin Hauge and Jacob DeWulf.

Created by the science teachers from each school, the challenge presented to the teams had two objectives. First, the students were broken into separate teams composed of a mixture from each school. Each team had to construct a machine that kept a marble moving for the longest possible time before dropping it out the other end. After 30 minutes of preparation, work was halted, and the team with the slowest machine won.

The next objective required the schools to get back into their original school groups and engineer a device (from a limited amount of given supplies) capable of activating a series of energy transfers/transformations by dropping the marble into the pegboard design constructed during the first objective. The marble moving along the pegboard system represented mechanical energy. Somehow, the marble then activated a new part of the apparatus that exhibited a transfer of energy from mechanical (the marble on pegboard) to a new kind of energy chosen by the school student team. The new energy chosen then activated another part of the apparatus which, in turn, transferred its energy to yet a new kind of energy. The objective was to have as many energy transfers / transformations as possible using only the given supplies.

Jon Hanson, NEWESD Science Coordinator, was present taking pictures and video of the entire event. He commented that he was very impressed with the challenges that the teachers had created for the students and how well the students were engaged during the entire day. They even worked through their lunches.

At 12:30 p.m., each team launched two trials aimed at producing the most energy transfers/transformations. Team Wilbur, consisting of science teacher Jason Maioho and students Casey Sliger, James Norris, Donna Llewellyn, Austin Goodman, Dylan Crow and Elizabeth Richardson were the winners of the Bi-County Science Challenge and took home the illustrious Golden Flask Award. Congratulations to all the students present during this awesome event, and we look forward to another one next year!