COLUMBUS — On their first trip to the Purdue Boiler Tech Challenge, a team from Brown County High School won the whole thing.
Sophomore, junior and senior engineering students participated in the competition April 6 at Purdue Polytechnic Columbus campus. Brown County faced off against teams from Columbus East, Columbus North, Jennings County, North Decatur, South Dearborn and South Decatur high schools, along with a team from Columbus Signature Academy.
Brown County earned three second-place trophies in the five competitions and one first-place trophy to get the top spot.
“We’re excited. I am super proud of the students,” said Chris Townsend, an engineering and technology teacher at BCHS. “They obviously did phenomenally well.”
North Decatur High School won second place overall. Columbus East High School, Columbus North High School and Jennings County High School had won in the past, according to a news release from Purdue Polytechnic Columbus.
Teams of four students participated in each competition: Save It, Traverse It, Shield It, Balance It and Free It. The theme of the competition was “Purdue Polytechnic Engineers Infinity War.”
Students aren’t able to prepare for the challenges ahead of time. All they knew about the competition before showing up is the theme, Townsend said.
“They don’t tell you what the competitions are, so there’s no prepping for it. You basically show up the day of and they give you a problem in each of the competitions, then you have to use your STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills to go through and solve that,” Townsend said.
In the Balance It competition, students had to apply engineering and AP physics concepts to mathematically solve a problem and balance out an apparatus, Townsend said. Brown County won second place in that competition.
For “Save It,” students built a small electromagnet and designed a system to rescue Lego people out of an area and move them to a holding area. Brown County won a first-place trophy in this competition.
Brown County won another second-place trophy in the Traverse It competition.
In the Free It competition, students were required to design an apparatus to work within a certain field in order to complete a task, Townsend said. Students also won a second-place trophy in this competition.
Students were given about three-and-a-half hours to solve the problems before them. Teachers also competed in challenges before going to observe the students.
“We’re not allowed to help them in any way. I couldn’t give them advice or suggestion,” Townsend said.
The top-performing 20 students in the high school’s engineering courses were selected to participate in the competition, Townsend said. “We were really limited, or I would have loved to have taken a lot more students,” he said.
“I am just super proud of the kids. They did a phenomenal job. We came in there the first year and competed against schools that are much bigger than us.”
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Traverse It team: Brad Knauer, Sam Bowman, Roarke Ireland and Riley Arnholt
Balance It team: Brennan Hobbs, Noah Hostetler, Logan Fittz and Monty Brock
Save It team: Shelby York, Chloee Robison, Gabi Bethards and Kara Adams
Free It team: Jaden Minor, Tim Kilburn, Aaron McCann and David Tucker
Shield It team: Nate Fox, Zelton Kay, Emmalyn Platt and Dakota Dinsmore
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