Burke, Brown are Conquerors of the Hill

Students of Stephen Fineman, David Bandel, Virginia Casazza and Michael Kleeman gathered in the C gym at Thursday for the Conqueror of the Hill final tournament.

The tournament, held each year throughout the state, requires students to apply lessons from physics and engineering as they design and build a mechanically-powered device using a certain set of building materials.

"[The] objective is simple: Reach as high as you can within a scoring zone at the top of the hill," Fineman wrote. The "hills" are constructed slopes, and teams of students build carts that can race to the top of the hill and beat out their opponents in height.

The Chatham teams who competed in the tournament were:

1. James Arnuk & Geoff Gill
2. Kathleen Criss & Julie Messing
3. Libby Dalziel & Sam Kennedy
4. Emily Barbey & Lauren Winschuh
5. Trip Burke & Colin Brown
6. Andrew Blazoski*
7. Megan Palmisano & Sarah Fabian
8. Stephanie Serrapica*
9. Scott Kepler & Laurent Ezzet
10. Brian Petrunik*
11. Jack Benton*

"Projects include projectiles to block or topple an opponent, 'baby-gate' extensions, spring-loaded antennae that pop up, and flying hacksaw blades. All this is done using only rubber band or mousetrap power," Fineman said.

Projects must fit inside a starting zone and work on a release mechanism.

As the competition went on, projects were damaged, broken or ceased to work at all. One match came down to a tie-breaker between James Arnuk and Geoff Gill and opponents Kathleen Criss and Julie Messing. Both their projects failed to leave the starting zone or to detonate to their full height.

To break the tie, Bandel weighed the mass of the two projects. Arnuk and Gill came out as the winners by 74 grams, with their device measuring 812 grams to Criss and Messing's 886.

But in the end, damage to Arnuk and Gill's project meant they lost in the final round to Trip Burke and Colin Brown, whose project (nicknamed "Old Faithful" after it continued to perform as intended, without damage or incident) won the day.

*Teammate's name withheld