(by Don Meador, Allen County Schools)
Months of work was rewarded last weekend as Allen County-Scottsville High School students Jared Walden and Quinn Towery earned first place in the Mission Possible event at the Kentucky State Science Olympiad competition at Western Kentucky University.
The students won the state championship in one of the most challenging events in Science Olympiad, according to AC-S Science Olympiad coach Jeremy Byrn.
“Mission Possible is arguably the most difficult event in Science Olympiad history,” Byrn said. “They have worked countless hours since the fall on the device. Saturday was the first time that it ran all the way through without a mistake in competition.”
The Mission Possible project requires students to---prior to the competition---design, build, test and document a "Rube Goldberg-like device" that completes a required final task using a sequence of consecutive tasks. In competition, the students demonstrate the machine which they have created.
“You have to start the machine by pouring in 10 marbles, 10 paper clips, and 10 golf tees,” Walden explained about their device. “That was considered the starting task and that starting task has to lead to a final task which ends up turning a light on. In between your starting task and your final task you have energy transfer. That is like taking mechanical energy and converting it to electrical energy or taking electrical energy and converting it to mechanical energy.”
Quinn Towery noted that the objective behind the machine is simple but the process is complicated.
“Basically you are taking a simple task and turning it into a extremely complicated task to make the simple task work,” added Towery. “It took a lot of work. We learned all kinds of new things about electricity and physics and motion. It was incredibly helpful.”
Competition judges also looked for ways in which differ forms of energy were used.
“To get maximum points you had to use energy from the electromagnetic spectrum--- chemical energy, thermal energy, mechanical and electrical energy,” Walden said.
The machine----put together inside of a box-like container---must complete its tasks within a 60 to 90 second time frame. Walden points out that the design and planning must include a way to make sure that the time limit is met.
“At the state level, the time varies from 60 to 90 seconds so you have to have some time of mechanism that will judge how long the machine will run,” Walden said. “So we used a water clock and we would put a specific amount of weight in there to determine how long it runs. Our machine---everything but the water clock---takes less than 10 seconds to run. That’s with all kinds of energy transfers happening. We had 15 energy transfers that took about seven seconds to happen and the water clock will run the rest of the time.”
The machine running to perfection at the state competition was the climatic moment for the project which started near the end of October. The students finished in early March. The pair worked several hours a week on the project.
The students’ work involved hours of brainstorming, trial, and error.
“We spent over half of our time planning out what components to use in the machine,” Towery noted. “We had to plan out what components would work in series with each other and what wouldn’t work. Eventually we worked it down from a list of over 100 ideals to a list of 15 ideals that would work 99 percent of the time.”
Walden added that building the machine often involved tedious and time-consuming tasks.
“In January, we started to put stuff in the box which houses the machine,” Walden said. “We had to wire the machine because we used batteries to power the machine. One day, we had to take several hours just to wire each and every piece of the machine so that it would run properly.”
The two admitted there were times of frustration. Some days went according to plan while, on other days, things did not go as well.
“We had several of those frustrating times,” Towery acknowledged. “We had several times when we made a simple mistake that we quickly figured out how to fix but other times when we had catastrophic failure. That was disheartening but we eventually got it all to come together.”
Walden and Towery had informational input on the project from Allen County resident John Newman---a retired electrical engineer. Newman offered insight and supplies to aid the pair as they completed the project---a project in which their hard work and dedication was rewarded last Saturday when the machine functioning to perfection.
“It was a big relief since we had worked so long on this project,” Towery said. “It was wonderful that it completed in the time it needed to and worked without a hitch.”
The Mission Possible project has impacted both Towery and Walden. Towery admits that’s he re-thinking his career options while Walden has already changed his career ambition.
“At the beginning of my sophomore year, I planned on going into civil engineering and I even signed up in March for civil engineering classes at Western,” Walden said. “But a couple days ago, I changed my major to electrical engineering so I will be using what I have learned to better my future.”
The pair impressed one of the Science Olympiad judges so much that she offered both students an opportunity to work in a lab at Western Kentucky University this summer. Walden---who will graduate from AC-SH in June---is considering the offer. Towery is a junior and can not accept the offer due to other summer commitments.