From Wheatland Center School: Two Wheatland Center School teams placed in the top 5 during the STEM Forward Middle School Contrapt Wisconsin Competition. They were awarded 2nd and 3rd place in the final judging last week. This year¶s task was to turn on a light in at least 8 steps. This project allows students to work on skills involving engineering, simple machines, trial and error, project planning, physics, teamwork, and creativity. A contraption is a machine that accomplishes a simple task in a complicated, fun way by transferring energy from one object to another in a chain reaction. There were 34 teams representing 14 different schools that competed virtually by submitting a video presentation and a successful run of their machine to turn on the light. Students then joined live on Friday, May 7th via Zoom to meet with judges for questions and answers and to perform a live run to be scored for the competition. Judges were from different types of engineering backgrounds and also teachers from around Wisconsin. Mrs. Kandi Horton, Wheatland Teacher said, “I love this competition! Students have to really work on patience and perseverance because connecting the steps is pretty challenging especially since the goal is to complete the task without having to intervene. It requires students to problem-solve, learn to fail, and try new ways of thinking in order to be successful.”