Take the 2018 Fluor Engineering Challenge!

I became aware of this competition a little over a year ago (2017 challenge, which was different from this one) when I was perusing the sciencebuddies.com site. I thought it was interesting and tried it with my daughter's class along with a few other classes.

Though the teachers and I were concerned about spilling water in class on the carpet (yes, last year's project involved a tub of water), it wasn’t too bad. And the project was great! The students learned a lot, but more importantly, they had fun figuring things out for themselves.

Year after year, this Flour Engineering Challenge is just plain fun. But best of all, it gives your children opportunities to win money for their school.

The objective of the 2018 Fluor Engineering Challenge is to use limited materials to build one device (the launcher) that launches an aluminum foil ball and another device (the receiver) that catches the ball. The farther your ball flies before being successfully caught by the receiver, the more points you get. 

Your children can use only a limited list of materials, and there are points associated with each item. The less material your children use, the more points they keep.

List of Materials (see website for more detail description):

Corrugated cardboard base

Large paper or plastic cups

Wooden rulers

Paper

Wooden pencils

Rubber bands

Large paper clips

Roll of adhesive tape

2018 Flour Engineering Challenge Website

Challenge objective & info

In mid-February, I’m planning to do this project at a local elementary school. I’ll share the results with you afterwards.

Have fun!