TCHS Students Receive Awards at JPL Invention Challenge
By Temple City Tribune
Published: Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
Advanced Computer Aided Design Students Take Award “Most Artistic” Design
Three student teams recently competed in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Invention Challenge 2009. The “A Ton of Bricks” contest, challenged students throughout Southern California to build 4-foot long bridges out of paper products and glue with maximum efficiency to hold as many bricks as possible at the mid-point of the bridge.
(l-r) Advisor Dave Dickie, Daniel Yee, Andrew Truong, Sophia Chang, Sammy Chang, Raymond Van, Nikolas Smalldridge. - Photo by Jerry Jambazian
Under the direction of TCHS instructor Dave Dickie, students spent weeks designing, building, and testing their bridges. Students then traveled to Orange Coast College to compete in the JPL regional semi-final competition. TCHS teams successfully met the challenge with their bridges taking 3rd, 4th and 5th place out of 25 entries.
Because of their high rankings, TCHS students were eligible to compete in the final competition. There were two categories, high school and JPL engineers, in the final event.
TCHS students were successful again, placing 4th, 6th, and 12th in their category. The 4th place bridge impressively exceeded the JPL engineer’s 3rd place bridge in efficiency. Also, a panel of four engineers presented a TCHS bridge with the “Most Artistic” award for its real-life appearance.
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