Local public school students got the ball rolling Friday morning -- literally.
Students from Ogden Public School and Edgewater Park Public School competed in a design competition that required the participants to build self-powered rubber band fans that can blow a ping pong ball down a track.
Part of National Engineer Month, engineers from Nordmin Engineering hosted the annual PEO Student Team Design Competition to challenge students to come up with new and different ideas to solve problems within their designs.
"The purpose is to get them thinking about what engineering is," said Nathan Bruno, electrical and control designer.
"It's a process of planning, designing, building, testing and then repeat, if your desired result isn't achieved.
"It gets them thinking creatively and imaginatively because engineering takes a little but if imagination and thinking outside of the box."
The students were asked to design fans based on drawings they had previously drawn in class.
They spent the morning building the fans out of regular office supplies, testing them out and heading back to the drawing board if they didn't work properly.
"We want to project onto the students that nothing in engineering is perfect the first time around so it takes a few iterations."
In order to be successful the fans had to be self-supporting and could not be powered by an electrical device.
The team that constructed the fan that could blow the ball the farthest won the competition.
"It's really important because it encompasses things like team building, team work, planning and designing," said Edgewater Park Public School teacher, Carrie Henny. "It gives them a sense of accomplishment and they are awarded if their fan or device works," she added.
