KUA STEM Team Heads to National Championship and Being Recognized by NH Governor Lynch
Kimball Union’s STEM Team (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), the KUA Wildcats, were selected as the NH RWDC (Real World Design Challenge) State Winners for 2012. Coached by KUA math and science teacher, Dr. Thomas Pasquini, the team was made up of seven members: Elizabeth Exton, Inseo Hwang, Jeff Kim, Ziyi Ling, Bill Peng, JR Jiang, and Diego Rossi.
The Real World Design Challenge (RWDC) is an annual high school competition run by a public-private partnership with the goal of sustainably increasing the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce. The partners are focused on working within the context of the American educational system to transform STEM education in the United States by providing professional science and engineering and learning resources to students and teachers.
Every teacher that participates in the RWDC gets $1 million in professional engineering software along with training, curriculum materials, and access to mentors. Teams of 3-7 high school students use these resources to solve an engineering challenge that is currently faced by industry.
This year’s challenge was to design an efficient, low-carbon emission and environmentally friendly personal light sport aircraft. The aircraft had to accommodate two team members and be able to fly 200 miles in less than two hours at a cruise altitude of 1000 feet above ground level (AGL) minimum. For the State Challenge, teams performed aerodynamic, propulsion, sizing, and weight estimation analyses to optimize wing geometry and minimize specific fuel consumption (SFC). Teams wrote a 2000 word essay on what they would see and do given the opportunity to fly their design across the country.
During the project, the team worked with three different mentors: William Witzig, who is a flight test pilot, Derek Straub, who is a mechanical engineer for MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and Rangi Keen, a local member of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) and a new participant in the RWDC, who is now registered on the National Mentor list.
The team formed in December with one group working on the science of flight and wing design and another group beginning to learn the CAD software. Right after they returned from Christmas break, they had a major brainstorming session. This was a critical juncture. After weighing all the ideas, they took 6 or 7 concepts to their mentors and started collaborating back and forth, bouncing ideas off of each other, and converging on their design. At this point, the work changed from learning to creating. A couple of students were building the model of the wing in CAD and testing it, and others were beginning to draft an essay which ultimately became a 74–page document that was a key part of their project. This is a technical document describing their thinking and the work that they did toward designing the wing. During the week or so leading up to the deadline, including Super Bowl Sunday, the group was hard at work finishing up this crucial component of their entry.
The KUA Wildcats will represent New Hampshire in the national competition in Washington, DC April 20-23. This year 17 teams competed for this honor.
New Hampshire Governor John Lynch will recognize the students with a citation on April 2, 2012 at 3:30 pm at his office in Concord, NH.
“We are so proud of these enterprising and talented students,” said Head of School Mike Schafer. “Giving students the opportunity to challenge themselves and to explore their interests and passions is one of the hallmarks of a Kimball Union education and these young people shown how rewarding those kinds of efforts can be.”
