I recall being a student surrounded by plenty of sports games and accolades of the school’s best athletes. Some students excelled at math and science but lacked an outlet to challenge themselves and create projects even adults couldn’t achieve. How great it was to find out about Tech Wars.
What is Tech Wars? The event is essentially a massive competitive science fair. Hundreds of students gather with robots, boats, structures, etc. These incredible and creative projects are the passions of many local students who will be arriving this May to seek victory!
On May 14, Mission: Ignite will be Tech Wars at ECC City. Tech Wars gives high school and middle school students the chance to apply technical and engineering skills to have fun and compete with one another. In preparation for Tech Wars, we are showing off some of the creative activities students will participate in!
Here’s a list of the competitions that will be featured this year:
· Air-Powered Dragsters: Students create wooden models and power their mini-dragsters with compressed air to race against other schools. Fastest car wins!
· Game Coding Contest: Using specific coding platforms, students code their own playable games and create a display board with details about the game. They will then present their game to a panel of judges for analysis.
· Cardboard Boat Regatta: Students must design a three-person boat entirely out of cardboard, duct tape, water proofing, and paint. Boats that manage to stay afloat with all three members inside race for five laps to determine a winner!
· CAD Drop-Off Competition: Using the 3Ddesign CAD software, students reverse engineer a mechanical object of their choice. The designs must be clearly notated and drawn to scale.
· Rube Goldberg Machine: Students are given an 8x10 foot area to construct their own RGM, starting with a ball and ramp. They have 60 seconds for the RGM to on a light. Every RGM must have at least eight specific steps, so students will need to be creative to earn points!
· RoboBall: For this competition, students are required to build a radio-controlled robot that can collect balls from a bucket. During the event, students throw wiffle balls into a bucket and use their robot to retrieve the balls. The robots need to be as quick as possible, but also still function effectively, so one of the biggest challenges is to design something light but powerful.
These are just a few of the many ways students can showcase their technical abilities at Tech Wars this year. We look forward to seeing what they have to offer and wish them all the best!
Tech Wars is made possible as a collaboration between:
· WNY Technology Education Association
· SUNY ECC
· Mission: Ignite
· OneBridge Benefits
And all of the teachers and volunteers that make Tech Wars possible!
