Launch the Ball Far—Then Catch It

The 2018 competition is over, but you can still try this challenge for fun! Can you build a ball launcher and a receiver to successfully throw and catch? How far apart can you set the launcher and receiver and still make a catch?

Full details, including the building, testing, and scoring procedures, can be found in these formats:

• Instructions for Students
• Lesson Plan

Congratulations to All Participants

More than 3,800 students from 10 countries participated in the 2018 Science Buddies Engineering Challenge, sponsored by Fluor Corporation. Challenged to create a ball launcher and receiver using everyday materials (like cups, pencils, ruler, tape, rubber bands, and paper), students devised and tested innovative solutions and launcher designs. After successfully creating a simple machine to launch a small ball made from aluminum foil, many students continued to test and modify their designs to try for successful catches with even greater launch distances. More than 1,390 teams submitted entries for the 2018 Engineering Challenge.

Drawing Winners

All eligible team entries were placed into random prize drawings based on 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, organization, or afterschool program.

Top Ten Scores Overall

The 2018 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, the Challenge rules, and follow-up with teams, as necessary. Regardless of score, all entries that met the geographic requirements were entered in the random drawings.

Top Scores by Age

Students entering the 2018 Science Buddies Engineering Challenge worked in teams of up to four students. To recognize the hard work students did creating and testing their solutions and to give students a better sense of how their solutions and scores compare to other students of similar age, the tables and graphs below show the top scores and score distribution for submissions from ages 6-10, 11-14, and 15-18. (Note: The age used for each team is the average age of all members on the team.)

Students Embrace the Challenge

Students who entered the 2018 Science Buddies Engineering Challenge had the chance to explore, 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 (and their teachers) told us about their experience doing this year's Ball Launcher challenge: