Your assignment: Make a tool to separate a tray of golf balls and wood blocks into two piles without touching them. Transfer the piles across an obstacle course of orange cones, and drop them into designated boxes. Hurry up! Don’t step outside the boundary lines, or you’ll lose points.
Thousands of junior-high and high school students took on tasks like this one at 15 regional “Construction Challenge” competitive rallies held on Saturday, Feb. 7, across the U.S. and Canada. Their goal was to find creative solutions to real-life scenarios typical of construction sites or drawing tables. That, and the scholarship money at the end of the road.