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A pair of Powell students won first place in the robotics category at the Wyoming State Science Fair last month.
Dexter Opps and Keona Wisniewski tested three arrangements of gears, to see how …
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A pair of Powell students won first place in the robotics category at the Wyoming State Science Fair last month.
Dexter Opps and Keona Wisniewski tested three arrangements of gears, to see how they affected a robot’s speed and power.
“We chose this topic because we both love robotics,” Wisniewski explained.
The pair won first place in the robotics and intelligent machines category at the Regional Science Fair at Northwest College earlier this year to advance to the Wyoming State Science Fair, which was held at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
“It is quite an event,” said Necole Hanks, who teaches science at Powell Middle School. “It’s really exciting to see the kind of innovators and creators that are coming out of our schools.”
Opps said not very many students choose to compete in the robotics category — and the announcement that the Powell pair had won the category did not come as a shock to him.
“I was not that surprised when we found out we got first,” Opps said. “We rocked the presentations.”
He said the lessons they learned through their project will help with future research.
“We learned that things do not always go as planned, and you just have to roll with it,” Opps said.
Wisniewski added that a main lesson was that “it is not always easy to make things work the way you want them to work.”
The students said their project had the added benefit of helping the middle school robotics team, of which Opps is a member.
Their robotics project on gears also gave the seventh-graders insight that will be useful once they’re old enough to drive.
“We can apply this to our future when we want to buy a car or a truck,” Wisniewski said. “When you want to buy a car that can pull things, then you will want to buy a truck. If you want to buy a car that is fast, you will buy a car with high gearing.”
The students enjoyed going to Laramie and staying at the university.
“The state competition was a great way to see the University of Wyoming campus,” Opps said.
The State Science Fair was held before many events were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Opps and Wisniewski may still get the chance to compete on the national stage, as they can apply for the national science fair competition, Broadcom MASTERS in Washington, D.C. The national STEM competition is slated for this fall.
