Putting their minds to the test

Powered only by mousetraps, dozens of small cars launched across the Skyview Middle School gym on Saturday. Each had been developed for roughly a month by Kenai Peninsula Borough School District students for the annual Mind-A-Mazes competition.

Mind-A-Mazes, Nikiski Middle/High School teacher Brian Bailey said, is a problem-solving competition rooted in STEM that challenges students with tackling a difficult engineering problem and designing a solution. It requires teamwork, communication and iteration.

Saturday’s competition had two elements. First, students were tasked with creating a device that could move down a lane and strike a small target with only the power of a single mouse trap. For that problem, students were given a month to prepare and work in teams to design their solutions.

Across the gym on Saturday, dozens of such machines could be seen in motion. Many of them resembled cars, with lightweight bodies ferried by wheels often made of CDs or DVDs. Teams earned points for distance moved and if they hit the target — a coffee can several feet away. Devices that hit the can were deployed for second run measured for time.

That long-term project represented the majority of each team’s score in the competition, but was supplemented by a “spontaneous challenge,” which no team was briefed on before arriving in the gym.

That challenge tasked students with constructing a tower out of a small collection of materials — 20 Popsicle sticks, 10 toothpicks, a small cube of clay and a piece of card stock. Teams earned points for each vertical inch of their constructed tower, then for how much weight it could carry. A tower that crumbled beneath the amount of weight chosen by its team received no points.

The challenges faced by students, Bailey said, were difficult — even after a month of work only a few of the dozens of machines brought forward Saturday were able to hit the target. Students go through multiple ideas and prototypes before arriving at the competition, learning to better work with one another along the way.

The program has a rich history spanning at least 40 years, he said.

“It’s one of the best science and engineering challenges — in the district, definitely, if not the state.”

Bailey said 37 teams registered for Saturday’s meet, from Soldotna, Kenai, Homer, Ninilchik, Seward and others. A team had planned to attend from Nanwalek, but they were stymied by weather.

The Kenai Middle School Peachy Peaches, comprised ofScarlett Bernard, Isabella Eskelin, Gavin Sansotta and John Clark, used a shoebox on wheels made from Nintendo Wii games. They took first place overall in the junior division, but to get there they iterated constantly on their design. Sansotta said they started with more wheels and repeatedly switched out the axles.

“The process matters,” Eskelin said.

That process of iterating and trying produced a machine capable of moving across the gym and striking the target.

Having earned several points in the success of their first machine, the Peachy Peaches said they took a different approach during the spontaneous challenge. Rather than building a tall tower, they focused on a smaller structure — lower to the ground — that they knew could hold the maximum weight.

“The higher it is, the more risk,” Eskelin said.

Through Mind-A-Mazes, the group said they had to learn to collaborate in developing their machine and also bounce back from short-term failures — make a change and try again.

“What happens, happens,” Clark said.

Team Bluey — Truman Dodson, Noah Pancoast and Samuel Macias — took second in the intermediate division. They said that even after working on their project for a month — seeing it work plenty of times — getting up in front of a judge was still “nerve-racking.”

Like the Peachy Peaches, Team Bluey said they spent the last month experimenting and refining their design. Some ideas didn’t pan out, others could be seen in their final product — a car made from an egg carton, propelled by wheels made from compact disks.

In the spontaneous challenge, Pancoast said the clay wasn’t as sticky as they expected, so instead they relied on the paper — recognizing that the card stock provided was “pretty good.”

The group said that in the competition they were made to explore different ideas and make decisions on their way to designing a final product. Also, a surprisingly deep understanding of the power contained in a simple mousetrap.

Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.

Mind-A-Mazes 2024

Junior Division

Overall — 1. Peachy Peaches, Kenai Middle; 2. The Nerds, Soldotna Montessori; 3. The Eagles, Seward Elementary

Spontaneous Problem 1. The Ratatatatouilles, Soldotna Elementary, 26; 1. CR7s, West Homer Elementary, 26

Judge’s Choice — Winning Bobbleheads, Soldotna Elementary

Intermediate Division

Overall — 1. Pepsi Lovers, Nikiski Middle/High; 2. Team Bluey, Kenai Middle; 3. Top TIER, Kenai Middle

Spontaneous Problem Solving — 1. Team Bluey, Kenai Middle School

Judge’s Choice — Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice, Nikiski Middle/High