The 15th annual Design and Build Challenge puts teams’ problem solving skills to the test as they make electricity with the power of water.
CLEVELAND — Tubing, balloons, plastic bottles, and duct tape. Lots of duct tape.
Those are just some of the materials teams are allowed to use in this year’s Design and Build Challenge at the Great Lakes Science Center. Their mission: create electricity using the power of water, and the higher the voltage, the higher the score.
“The difficult part is making a prototype and building the tube because we don’t have much to work with,” said high school student Jasmyn Gardner. “But then again, we do.”
The challenge? Get water to move water straight up more than 3 feet, into a funnel, and back down through a hydroelectric generator.
“Oh my goodness, the tube,” Gardner said. “The tube is, like, really hard because we need enough pressure to get the water into it.”
Gardner’s team, Lady Voltage, won last year’s youth division. High schoolers are going head-to-head with professional corporate teams.
“I think we’re going to do good, but I see a lot of competition, so I hope we do our best,” added Gardner.
“They’re on a level playing field, and the high school students may be scoring higher than those professional engineers,” said Kirsten Ellenbogen, president and CEO of the Great Lake Science Center. “It’s a very special part of today that makes it really exciting and helps those high school students see themselves as somebody who could work at one of these corporations very soon.”
Designs are tested before going through three rounds of judging. Each of the 19 teams got creative on how the water is controlled.
“Every time I’ve seen this competition, there are multiple unique solutions that just blow me away,” said Brett Nicholas, vice president of education at the Science Center. “The creativity that happens with this sort of engineering is remarkable, and exactly what we want to inspire.”
Now in its 15th year, the Design and Build Challenge is one of the Science Center’s longest-running programs in its 30-year history.
“We’re so proud that, frankly, some of the engineers here today are people that grew up with the science center,” Ellenbogen said. “So many people can tell a story of coming here again and again and again as a child, and we help them build an identity as someone who can do science and can do engineering.”
This year’s top honors went to teams from Lincoln Electric and the Cleveland School of Science and Medicine.