On Wednesday March 11, 2015, four Tamaqua and West Penn Elementary school students participated in the Schuylkill county STEM design challenge. During the event, students were given a task of building something that would move a ping-pong ball 4 feet. In addition, their “contraption” had to be built entirely out of K’Nex pieces.
Participants were Alexxa Kowalski, West Penn Elementary; and Nelson Bensinger, Cian McLaughlin, and Jonathan Ulicny from Tamaqua Elementary.
The students met during school time from December through March to come up with ideas and a theme for their design. Teachers Samantha Yachera and Cindy Miller said the team was called “STEAMing through time”.  This name came out of the STEM learning concept (using Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and we also added A for the Arts to create STEAM.
The students decided that their “contraption” would be a time capsule that carried the ping pong ball to different events throughout history.  The 4th graders were in the 4th-5th grade group along with 7 other teams. Each team had two hours to rebuild their design that they worked on using blueprints that they created.
Local professionals judged the competition and the students had to do a 2 minute presentation on what they designed and why. At the end of the day the judges announced the winners. Tamaqua’s team took 3rd place in the competition.
“The students were excited with the medals they won and represented Tamaqua School District very well,” added Yachera.

Below photos special to TamaquaArea.com: