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Its a contest that asks students to come up with a machine that shows how different types of energy work such as electrical, chemical or kinetic, among others and relate their project back to a theme.

This year, the Engineering Machine Design Contests theme is Transforming Space Technology, and Blue Earth Area high school students were among several local teams to create engineering projects that were out of this world.

Junior Gustavo Chavero said their project follows the story of a prisoner in outer space trying to escape.

We thought of it as a prison break from outer space, and we have a marble that is the prisoner, and he tries to escape through a series of courses and ends up leaving the planet hes currently on, he said.

The project runs mostly on gravity until the end, where a lever and a trebuchet help the prisoner escape.

Ninth grader Dane Sohn said the idea for the project came from a lot of brainstorming.

Each person had different ideas that we could start with, and we ended up on the prison break. At first we didnt have a final ending, but then we figured we could just have him escape, he said.

Lake Crystal Wellcome Memorial high school students also participated.

Their Rube Goldberg machine-style entry focused on NASA, said 10th grader Destiny Alberty, and involved uses of gravity, levers, motors and even hydraulics.

We wanted to focus on NASA and how its very clean. It doesnt necessarily look pretty, but its effective and it gets things done, Alberty said. We mainly wanted to focus on the technology part of the space technology. Thats why we picked NASA.

Minnesota State Universitys College of Science, Engineering and Technology hosted the Minnesota State Engineering Center of Excellences regional contest Friday afternoon.

A combination of both middle and high school teams from across the state competed, said College of Science, Engineering and Technology Acting Dean Aaron Budge.

The junior division consisted of teams from St. Paul, Cottage Grove and more.

The senior division, meanwhile, featured teams from Blue Earth, Iowa, Owatonna, Lake Crystal and more.

Awards are given out in part to teams with projects that are durable, extensively use household items, best display the competition theme, are the crowd favorite and more.

Finalists in both divisions also get the chance to advance to the championship, held at Anoka Technical College.

Projects are judged on a combination of requirements, said Budge.

They give a presentation about what their machine is and does and how they came up with that theme. Part of it relates to that oral presentation that they do. Part of it relates to how well the machine actually works. Does it require them to intervene? he said.

Projects are also limited in size and have to have a certain number of steps along the way.

Otherwise, the creativity is up to the students.

Budge said the contest gives an opportunity for students to get involved in STEM.

That type of excitement is really what were hoping to have, to get the students excited about science, engineering, mathematics and other things that can really see them through moving forward in their career, he said.

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Local teams design out of this world projects in regional engineering contest - Mankato Free Press