Amherst/Getzville Courier/ Friday, January 16, 2015
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NCCC hosts 18th annual Tech Wars Competition By Rebecca Gunning LOCKPORT STAR EDITOR
On Wednesday, Jan. 14, Niagara County Community College hosted its 18th annual Tech Wars Competition. Nearly 30 school districts from all over Western New York visited the campus to compete in 21 different engineering and technology events, with Cleveland Hill High School being crowned the 2015 Tech War Champions. The event was open to students in grades 6 through 12, with middle school and high school
divisions in many of the competitions. Eighteen years ago when Tech Wars first began, there was one event with students from three schools. This year’s competition had around 700 students registered. There is a wide array of events, ranging from the amount of weight a wooden bridge can hold to robots building towers to windmill construction. One of the most anticipated ones is the Sumo Bot competition, which high school students build 20-pound robots to face off against each other.
“These things are built from scratch by the students,” explained Mark Voisinet, an instructor at NCCC who has been involved with Tech Wars since 2000. “They’re starting with raw materials and doing everything from mechanical construction of it to all of the mounting of electronic components to all the programing and wiring that needs to be done in order to run the robots.” Another event that saw many participants was the Cardboard Boat Regatta. In this competition, students must construct a boat REBECCA GUNNING
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L to R: Sweet Home students Alison Bell (freshman), Alyssa Duffy (freshman), Allie Perfetto (senior) and Madeline Bell (junior) placed third in the Cardboard Boat Regatta. using only broken down cardboard, tape, glue and paint. They then must be able to row it from one end of NCCC’s pool to the other and back. The oars also can only be created with cardboard and duct tape. “That’s one of the competitions where you see a wide array of very well done and thought-out projects as compared to the occasional refrigerator box with some duct tape holding it together,” said Voisinet with a laugh. One of the teams that
participated in the regatta was a team of four girls from Sweet Home High School, who wore squid hats and made a boat that looked like a whale. The girls’ team is made up of senior Allie Perfetto, freshman Alyssa Duffy, junior Madeline Bell, and her sister Alison, a freshman, and wound up finishing in third place. Voisinet found the allgirl team to be encouraging and follows the trend of more girls developing an interest in S.T.E.M.
(Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields. “We’re just starting to see a little more growth with women coming into our technology programs,” he explained. “There’s absolutely nothing in technology that a woman can’t do as well, if not better, than a man.”
See “Tech Wars”, Page 2