Crescenta Valley High School engineering students remain on target in competition at JPL
A team of engineering students from Crescenta Valley High School took home fourth place in a competition on Friday against 22 other high school teams at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where they competed in building machines to fling dodge balls and hit targets within a minute.
Crescenta Valley High’s five-member team built a motor to launch dodge balls in a way similar to how a baseball-pitching machine operates.
Their goal was to launch three balls and hit three different targets within the allotted 60 seconds.
They were issued the challenge in September and worked over the next couple of months under the supervision of Crescenta Valley High engineering teacher Greg Neat and mentors Bruce Wilton and Lyn Repath-Martos.
But for freshman Lyron Co Ting Keh, the lessons surrounding the project were not all about engineering or physics.
“What I’ve learned — never argue with your team,” he said, adding that the classmates still disagreed over their approach to build the machine as the deadline drew ever closer.
“We saw how much time we had left, and it wasn’t that much, so we got together,” he said.
Los Angeles High School brought two teams to the competition — one took first place and other won second.
Crescenta Valley High initially tied with Lawndale High School, resulting in both teams going into a “dodge ball death match,” and Lawndale ultimately won third place.
Each team was asked to hit four targets in that second challenge, and Crescenta Valley’s machine hit two out of four targets, resulting in the fourth-place finish.
Although the students had hoped to score more points, they said they were proud of their accomplishment.
“We’re really happy with the results,” sophomore Jacob Ralston said.
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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com
Twitter: @kellymcorrigan
