Hempfield students clinch top spot in science center competition

Hempfield students took a page from the history books to help them clinch the top spot for the second consecutive year at the Carnegie Science Center’s STEM competition.

The Chain Reaction Contraption Contest, held virtually this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, brought together 12 teams from schools across the region, with 80 students working to build machines that accomplish simple tasks through a series of complicated steps.

This year’s task at hand: Design and build a contraption that completes any of the previous 19 contest tasks in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the competition.

With the theme “Hindsight is 2020” in mind, Hempfield students created the “Rubesonian of Inventions,” a museum-based contraption that pays homage to all 19 tasks.

“They made one flat contraption to fit the guidelines and they chose to do theirs as a museum of inventions and to incorporate each of the individual 19 different tasks as inventions in this museum,” said Tom Harden, chemistry teacher at Hempfield Area High School and project advisor. “I thought it was a very bold approach.”

Using pieces from up to four previous contraptions kept at the high school, the students built the machine that completes tasks like shaving a balloon, buffing a shoe and putting a letter into an envelope. Each step is connected, occurring once in the task before it is complete.

Requirements for the competition stated that the entire project had to be completed in 20 or more steps, running between 30 seconds and 2 minutes.

The 12 students working on Hempfield’s project split up the 19 tasks, working in small groups to help them adhere to social distancing measures and designating who would build and who would scavenge for pieces from previous projects. Students were required to have their temperatures taken, wear face masks and answer covid questions before meeting.

In all, it took 12 sessions and 211 man hours to complete the project.

“I appreciate the student’s dedication to it,” Harden said.

The competition was split into two rounds, with students submitting projects via video. Judges based their decision on the reliability of the contraption, how it fit with the selected theme, how long it took to reset it for a second run, creativity, presentation and progress reports that were submitted prior to the competition.

Eight teams were chosen by judges from the Westinghouse Electric Co. to proceed to the finals, where teams were given 30 minutes to present and answer questions from the judges via Zoom.

After Hempfield in first place came the Mohawk Area School District in Lawrence County, who won second place, and Indian Creek High School from Ohio in third. Special awards also were presented, with Indian Creek earning longest successfully executed contraption and most green.

North Allegheny Intermediate High School took home rookie of the year, Pine-Richland High School won best presentation, Franklin Regional Senior High School earned the most efficient reset and Hempfield won the most innovative contraption.

“It was nice, it was refreshing just to be able to get this kind of dedication, not just from the kids but from the parents to support them doing it,” Harden said. “If you can give the kids an opportunity to get … something that’s kind of normal to them then it’s a win for everybody involved if you can do it safely.”