Build a Water System to Move Beads

The 2017 competition is over, but you can still try this challenge for fun! Can you build a water system that efficiently moves beads from one terrace to another? How many terraces can you create without getting the beads stuck?

Full details, including the building, testing, and scoring procedures, can be found in the Follow the Flow project.

Congratulations to All Participants

Over 3000 students from 11 countries participated in the 2017 Science Buddies Engineering Challenge, sponsored by Fluor Corporation. Starting with a few simple materials (cups, aluminum foil, tape, and popsicle sticks) students came up with creative ways to build a water flow system to move beads through terraced layers. A small sampling of the hundreds of entries can be seen in Figure 1. We were impressed with the range of solutions students came up with, as well as the innovative spirit and 'can-do' attitude demonstrated by teams around the world!

Drawing Winners

All eligible team entries were placed into random prize drawings based on their geographic location. Congratulations to the ten winning teams listed in Table 1 whose names were drawn from the eligible pools! Each of these teams earned $1,000 USD from Fluor Corporation for their school or afterschool program.

Top Ten Scores Overall

The 2017 Science Buddies Engineering Challenge was open to students in grades K-12. The top 10 scores, overall, are shown in Table 2. All scores were validated by Science Buddies staff based on submission photos and the Challenge rules. The theoretical maximum for this challenge, given the limitation of 9 levels, is less than nine thousand points. Regardless of score, all entries that met the geographic requirements were entered in the random drawings.

Students Embrace the Challenge

Students who entered the 2017 Science Buddies Engineering Challenge learned, firsthand, what it means to be an engineer and to collaborate with others to solve a problem and improve a solution. Here are a few examples of what students told us about their experience doing this year's water flow challenge: