Students compete in engineering competition at NASA’s JPL

Most people know what a difference a day makes. But anyone who’s ever been to the annual Invention Challenge at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory knows it’s the milliseconds that count.

That’s where area students with a penchant for engineering test their mettle against JPL’s best and brightest to see who can come up with the best mechanical response to a carefully crafted engineering challenge.

PHOTOS: Student inventors show off engineering skills at JPL

This year — the event’s 17th appearance on the La Cañada campus — Crescenta Valley High School students took second place in the schools category for creating a machine designed to carry a billiard ball a distance of 5 yards, using three different means of transportation in precisely 20 seconds.

Under the direction of teacher Greg Neat, the students spent months on the project, which ultimately completed the task in 20.106 seconds. The first-place winner, built by students from Diamond Bar High School, did it in 20.002 seconds.

For CVHS senior Daniel Palmer, this year’s Invention Challenge was his fourth. He likes how the challenge is a distillation of the engineering process.

“[In engineering] you have to plan it, then you have to build it and you have to test it to see how well it performs, all of which this competition does, just on a smaller scale,” he said.

Paul MacNeal, a mechanical systems engineer at JPL, created the idea for the challenge after helping his son with an extra credit assignment to build a car propelled by just two balloons. Shortly thereafter, the inaugural Invention Challenge pit more than 40 JPLers against one another in a similar endeavor.

Since then, the project has become almost more for students than for employees. MacNeal is perfectly fine with that.

“They are engineers, they just don’t know it yet,” he said of the student participants. “Because they solved a problem, and that’s what engineers do.”

JPL Deputy Director Lt. Gen. Larry James, who welcomed visiting students and teachers, said the event challenges participants to seek creative solutions to a problem.

James said JPL officials believe it’s important to encourage the students’ excitement about science, technology, engineering and math. “It really gives them the opportunity to see all the things they can do in this world,” he said.

More than 20 student teams answered this year’s challenges, while nine employees competed. Some machines evoked Rube Goldberg, while others made use of LEGO blocks, tape and conveyor belts.

While many teams completed the challenge, several watched weeks of hard work buckle under dysfunctional bells, timers or inadequate construction.

Failure, however, is allowed at the JPL Challenge, where a well-planned feat of engineering — rather than a single victory — is the true accomplishment.

“It’s not what works that’s important, it’s what doesn’t work,” said CVHS junior Adrian Samkian, explaining that every failure is simply a challenge to find another solution.

Teammate Connor Cruz, a junior who joined the school’s robotics class after competing in last year’s event, concurred.

“There’s no real way to fail in engineering,” he said.

MacNeal said the event’s ultimate goal is for students like Cruz to have fun and return to school inspired and ready to learn and do more.

“The hope is they’ll be so attracted to the process of engineering and the excitement of solving problems, they’ll take math and science courses, get into a four-year college and maybe come here to work at JPL one day,” he said.