The Tech Challenge

A signature program of The Tech Museum of Innovation, The Tech Challenge is an annual team design challenge for students in grades 5-12 that introduces and reinforces the science and engineering design process with a hands-on project geared to solving a real-world problem.

Designed to inspire the next generation of Silicon Valley innovators, The Tech Challenge provides months of team learning in science, engineering, and math, culminating in the Event Days on Saturday, April 12 and Sunday, April 13, 2014. Team efforts are celebrated in an awards ceremony, recognizing everything from Best Overall Solution to Most Spectacular Failure.

The Tech Challenge aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core. It reinforces 21^st century skills of creativity, problem solving, design, teamwork, leadership, presentation, risk-taking, perseverance, and learning from failure. This program makes a great experience for classrooms, home schools, after-school programs, extra-credit projects, clubs, or friends! It is:

- Open to students in grades 5-12.

- 3 grade levels: Elementary: 5-6; Middle School: 7-8; High School: 9-12.

- Participants collaborate in teams of 2 to 6 people.

- Registration fees are only $50 for the entire team.

- Fees waived for Title I schools/after-school programs (your donations make this possible!)

- Solutions can be created with common, low-cost materials.

- There are no pre-qualifying conditions to enter.

- Special needs students are encouraged.

We have attached an Executive Summary of our 2013 Tech Challenge - Asteroids Rock!

The Tech Challenge 2014: Harnessing the Wind

The wind has been used since humans first put up sails. It's now your turn to harness this amazing natural resource. In California we spend 19% of our total energy consumption moving and processing water. This scarce resource travels long distances to get to your tap and even climbs almost 2,000 feet over the Tehachapi Mountains to get to Los Angeles using enough energy each year to power the entire city for about two months. Imagine if you were able to do this with a clean renewable energy source. The Challenge: harness the wind to move water to the people who need it!

Links:

• The Tech Challenge Home Page

• The Tech Challenge 2013 Executive Summary (PDF)
  

We want to thank all of our donors who helped make The 26th Tech Challenge a success.  This report is simply a re-cap of what we posted in May and we are busily planning the 27th Challenge!  The Tech Challenge brought young science, math, and engineering innovators together for a two-day competition at The Tech Museum of Innovation in April.  Every year, The Tech develops a scenario that challenges 5^th – 12^th graders to design a device to solve a problem.  The goal of the program is to inspire innovation, instruct young people how learn how to learn from failure and try another method when they face failure, teach how to keep an engineering journal, prepare participants to do a brief presentation, and to learn about teamwork.

We thank all of our individual supporters who have come through GlobalGiving and we thank all of our corporate and foundation sponsors, without whom this program would not be possible. For a list of sponsors, please follow this link: http://thetechchallenge.thetech.org/about-us/sponsors-partners

The 2013 scenario was this:

An unmanned spacecraft has been launched from Earth and has successfully landed on an asteroid. The craft has three packages of instruments that need to be deployed to three different locations on the asteroid. These instruments will evaluate the chemical composition of the asteroid and determine if there are enough valuable materials to justify future mining operations on the asteroid. The instruments are sensitive and need to be protected from significant impacts.

Specifically, the challenge for The Tech Challenge 2013 teams was to design a device to safely deploy these scientific instruments (eggs) from the landed spacecraft to three specific areas on the asteroid. The challenge also included designing proper packaging to protect them from being damaged (egg breakage). Success was achieved when teams landed one undamaged instrument package on each of the three landing areas and to do this in three minutes or less. Awards were given in the following categories:

best devices, costume, safety, spirit, sportsmanship, and most spectacular failure.

Some quotes from participants this year:

“I learned a lot about problem solving and teamwork. It was very interesting to watch our project succeed and fail.” 8^th grader from South Valley Middle School

“The Tech Challenge opened my mind to the different opportunities and how fun science can be. This also helped me to learn how to more easily collaborate with other members.” 8^th grader from Rancho Milpitas Middle School

“I learned about science and engineering and how we solve problems.” 7^th grader at Third Street Community Center

View videos and pictures from The Tech Challenge

http://thetechchallenge.thetech.org/media-room/photos-and-videos

We look forward to sharing news about our 27^th Tech Challenge that will take place in the Spring of 2014 – Windfest – young people will be challenged to design a device to create power from wind!

Links:

• The Tech Challenge website