Blair wins awards at Technology Challenge

Teams from Blair won two second place awards and a third place award at the annual MCPS Technology Challenge on Friday, April 19.

Juniors David Madej, Jonathan Edwards and Lisa Leung won second place for their entry "DJL Airport" in the One Thing Leads to Another competition (also known as Rube Goldberg, after the artist who designed hundreds of similar, inefficient machines). Juniors Andrew Busick, Kevin Chang and Evan Karlik won second place for their entry "Team F.L.A.S.H." in the Peak Performance competition. Sophomore Artemy Ryzhkov, freshman Agatha Nyake and a junior who requested anonymity won third place for their entry "Team Omega" in the HydroBots competition.

Teams from Kennedy High School won the remaining awards in those competitions and won the Mystery Challenge as well. "Dynamic Disney," "ROCKnROMANS" and "Kennedy Med" won the One Thing Leads To Another, Peak Performance and HydroBots competitions respectively.

All competitors recieved a yellow t-shirt emblazoned on the front with the Technology Challenge logo. Winners recieved an identical blue shirt with the word "WINNER" on the back in addition to the logo, as well as a small medal and a plaque for their school.

The competition, held at Montgomery College's Germantown campus, was opened by Steve Mikulski, coordinator of technology education for MCPS. He made a short speech thanking the competition's corporate sponsors and declared that "technology is about meeting human needs." He also mentioned that camera crews from MCPS TV and Paint Branch High School TV were on hand to document the competition.

Lois Robertson, who has worked in the competition for 12 years, added that "Montgomery College is excited" to host the event. To the competitors, she said "you are all winners."

In the HydroBots and One Thing Leads to Another competitions, Blair teams competed without much incident. Blair entered two teams in One Thing Leads to Another, DJL Airport and Bienvenue a Paris. Bienvenue a Paris was created by juniors Mohamed Abutaleb, Elizabeth Inkellis and Josh Packman.

Blair's teams in the Peak Performance competition had trouble from the start. One team's device broke on the trip to the competition site, the legality of another team's device was questioned by judges, and two other teams did not attend.

The broken device belonged to Team FUN (First Up iNcline), made up of juniors William Lai, Phil Repicky and Michael Sidorov, and could not be sufficiently repaired due to a lack of equipment. The team dropped out of the race, which comprised 40% of the total points in the competition, after one heat.

The device of Team F.L.A.S.H. (Fast, Little Automobile that Scales Hills) was contested because of a rule that says, "the vehicle must be totally autonomous." The device was attached to the bottom of the ramp by a long cord and a piece of velcro, which some judges considered not autonomous.

The team was allowed to compete with the cord/velcro attachment under the condition that judges could later decide to subtract points or disqualify the team entirely.

The team won every race it competed in, drawing mixed comments from spectators. As the first heat progressed, alternating comments of "that's tight!" and "that's cruddy..." were heard.

Judges declined to comment on how many points were taken off of the team's score.

Peak Performance competition co-captain Jason Daigle, of Sherwood High School, said, "the projects [for all competitions] get better and better every year." He attributed the higher quality projects to competitors who return year after year.

Daigle called the One Thing Leads To Another competition "a solid engineering challenge; the students really have to use their minds."

Peak Performance is "tried and true, a real challenge," according to Daigle. He also said that HydroBots, a new competition this year, will gain popularity. As he said that, a loud cheer erupted from the HydroBots competition area.