HUTCHINSON, Kan. — A team of students from Allen STEM Magnet School is the national champion in the elementary school division of the 2022 National KidWind Challenge. They won the award in San Antonio, Texas this week.
The team included:
Liam Clark – 5th
Gatlin Loepp – 4th
Kruz Hernandez – 4th
Zoey Schletzbaum – 4th
and Dalton Urban – 4th
"They have four different tunnels, that they get to test their wind turbine that they've built in," said assistant coach and Allen teacher Hannah Schletzbaum. "They get three runs for each tunnel and then their best time, their best energy was collected."
"They also competed in a floating turbine challenge, where they had actually built a second turbine and it had to be anchored in a wave pool. There were waves moving while the wind was blowing to see how much energy they could produce while still floating."
"They had a hydropower exploration instant challenge, where they had to construct a water-powered turbine. That was created completely on site within 30 minutes and tested. They were given points for the power output that it would produce.
Then, there was a solar array instant challenge. This was the first year that they did the solar array instant challenge. They joked around that there were a lot of kids that cried in that challenge, because it was really tough. There were four components to that challenge."
They also presented to a panel of judges. They had to go in and give a presentation that detailed from the beginning of their journey to where they are now the different things that they've done with their wind turbine, the things that they've learned and how they came to their final design.
According to coach Keith Gable, the most impressive thing may be how much they improved throughout the process.
"Joules is the energy output," Gable said. "At regionals, they had 22. At the state competition they had 55 joules and this is all in a sixty-second run. At nationals, they drop it down to 30 seconds, so they can get more runs in with more teams. Our final run in a tunnel that's very comparable to what we run in at regional and state, which is about 3.5 meters per second, they had an output of about 62 joules."
At nationals, they have four different tunnels with different wind speeds in an effort to test not only the energy output, but the resiliency of the design under real world conditions, as the wind doesn't blow at the same speed all the time.
"They have one that runs at 2 meters per second, one at around 3 meters per second, the typical one that we use in Kansas, our competition's about 3.5 to 4, depending on air density. Then, the last one, it was literally tearing up turbines, because it was running at 7 meters per second. Our team ended up pulling 69 joules."
With this being the first year in the program, the team honestly thought they'd do the regional competition here in Hutchinson and be done.
"We were really surprised when they took second there and made it to state," Schletzbaum said. "Before the state competition, our kids, they came up to school and they worked on their snow day, they worked over spring break, they were up here every weekend working. Just before the state competition, we presented to every grade level in the school. That was kind of their practice for their judging presentation. They gave their full presentation to each grade level and then they ran the turbines for them and showed them how that whole situation works."
The whole school did a spirit week this week in support of the team with dress up days that corresponded with the team's activities at nationals in San Antonio.
"One of the things that we talked about with our redesign is real world opportunities," Gable said. "When this fell in our lap in February, it was kind of just, give it a try and find out more about it and plan for next year and here we are."
The kids also got to spend some time at the clean power expo, as well.
"They walked through and they got to meet industry professionals and talk with them about their careers and education," Schletzbaum said. "They were so great with our kids, with explaining things. I don't know how many people, they got to go up and they asked about their jobs and what they do and how it relates to wind energy and were able to talk about our school with them and how they do engineering here in Hutchinson, Kansas."
The team also finished third in the quiz bowl portion of the competition, as well, and they're already talking with the coaches about ways to improve their design for next year.