Kealakehe students take 3rd in engineering competition
Alex Bell, Evan Curry, and Nicholas White, all sophomores at Kealakehe High School and second year students in the school’s STEM Academy, recently earned third place recognition in the Physical Sciences Environmental Engineering category at the 2019 ISEF competition held in Phoenix.
Over 1,700 students from grades 6-12 from all over the world participated.
The team previously won the local West Hawaii overall Science Fair and placed first in this category at the Hawaii State Science Fair, which gave them entry to compete in the International Science Fair. Their project used drone technology, infrared photography and GPS tracking to help locate and identify rapid ohia death on ohia trees.
The students hope to continue with similar and new projects for their junior year and qualify for the ISEF competition again.
Kealakehe rockets to top 20 at TARC
Team 2 from Kealakehe High School placed 20th at the Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC) held Saturday in The Plains, Virginia. The team competed against 100 other middle- and high-school aged teams from across the country.
TARC, which this year honored the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, required a team to launch a rocket which carries three raw eggs to an altitude of 856 feet before separating and returning the uncracked eggs to Earth – all within 43 and 46 seconds and with strict height and weight requirements. For round 2 at Saturday’s finals, the height requirement was lowered, forcing teams to adjust their measurements and launch calculations.
The finish comes with an invitation to participate in NASA’s Student Launch program.