Stemming away from the classroom.

During first and second period today, selected freshmen participated in a district wide challenge led by science teachers Melissa Hightower, J.T. Lewis, Jason Dickerson and Science Content Specialist Beau Kaelin.

Approximately 50 freshmen participated in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) challenge this morning in the cafeteria. The winning group will continue to the district competition at a later date. After the results were stated, the third place team believed that the scoring was not properly done.

The STEM challenge is a district wide event. The groups that participated today previously won a windmill challenge in their science class, meaning that the windmill they built together was able to spin the highest amount of times compared to others.

This year, the students were challenged to build a bridge at least two feet long that would be able to support weight with only straws and tape. The group whose bridge could hold the most weight without collapsing would ultimately win. Each bridge was placed in between two tables, placed two feet apart. Out of the 12 participating groups, only two of the bridges were able to hold weight.

“The goal of the STEM challenge is to give them [students] some hands on experience. They have previously researched their topic, so it is really to see if they can apply their research to their project and achieve their goal,” said Hightower.

Jasmine Hurley, Madison Reading and Abigail Scharfenberger placed first. Whitney Knight, Ezra Faith, Hailey Brinson and Madeline Cissell placed second while Damien Witek, Ashlee Williams, Trevor Schelling and Anthony Scott placed third.

After receiving the news of placing third, the four students on this team believe the first place team was given an opportunity that other teams were not given. 

The team that placed first had a second opportunity to test their bridge after failing, and as a result won first place by changing the position of their bridge.

“I think that’s just unfair to be honest because nobody else had that chance. What if we wanted to turn ours over because the support beams were on the other side? We could have tried that but they got an extra chance and we didn’t,” said Williams.

“If they really needed that second run, then they [the students] should have told them [the teachers] before hand that it was wrong. There’s no excuse that after the fact that you lost that you should go back up there and turn it around because it was wrong. What I really don’t understand is how come they got a second chance and no one else was able to turn theirs around,” said Witek.

Other team members Schelling and Scott believe they could have placed in a higher position if they could have changed the position of their bridge also.

However, the results are final. Congratulations to the first placing group who continue to a district challenge in which they will compete with students from other schools.