Penn-Trafford High School was recently represented by two teams of students at the Chain Reaction Contraption Contest (CRCC). The annual competition, sponsored by Westinghouse Electric Company and Carnegie Science Center, challenges high school students to create a machine that accomplishes a specific task in a series of steps.
This year, the challenge was to ‘turn the page’; to design a machine that will physically turn a page on a book in 20-steps. Students began designing their machines in October, beginning with a design drawing and documenting each phase of their machine’s progression.
The students demonstrated their machines to a panel of judges on December 10 at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh.
The two Penn-Trafford teams chose different approaches to the task. Team One (Bryce Kropczynski, Drew Sherwin, AJ Aquino, and Eli Emahizer) choose the theme of turning pages of history starting with the "Big Bang". Team Two (Amelia Haslam, Michael Harris, and Rachel Gill) choose a Fortune Teller theme. Their machine turned the page of a spellbook to reveal future predictions of the judges.
Both Penn-Trafford teams had an excellent showing, competing against 27 other schools from Western Pennsylvania.