Barker Middle School’s first Homeroom STEM Community Challenge was held on Friday, November 20th to close the celebration of American Education Week. The challenge was to build a ramp that a ping pong ball would travel the longest distance using only gravity with limited items: 4 straws, 3 sheets of paper, 1 file folder, and 30 cm of masking tape.
Scores were based on height of the ramp multiplied by the distance the ping pong ball traveled. Preliminary rounds were held at Barker, Coolspring Elementary 6th grade, Edgewood Elementary 5th grade, and Knapp Elementary 5th grade. Six top teams from Barker and a top team from each of the elementary schools took on KTR Corporation and NIPSCO, who were the community challengers for the Finale.
Barker Homerooms in the Finale: Mr. Liss, Mr. Gray, Ms. Grabowski, Ms. Sobecki, Mrs. Surma, and Mr. Callaway. Each team had two rolls and an average was calculated. The top 5 teams had a “roll off” with one chance to place. KTR Corporation had trouble with their ramp free standing and gave up their spot in the roll off.
Finale Roll Off:
5th Place—Homeroom Callaway, 4,770 inches
4th Place—Coolspring Elementary 6th grade top team, 4,935 inches
3rd Place—Homeroom Surma, 5,191 iches
2nd Place—Homeroom Grabowski, 6,308 inches
1st Place—Homeroom Sobecki, 9,475 inches
Congratulations to ALL and the next STEM Community Challenge will be in February and will coincide with National Engineers Week.