On Jan. 26, Delta hosted its annual Engineering and Technology Day for the 32nd year. This was the first year that Delta hosted the Engineering Day competition since the COVID-19 lockdown.
High schools entered students from grades 9-12 to compete in one of the three set contests: the drafting competition, the robotics competition and a “Maze Machine” design competition.
The drafting competition, held in Holt 130, required contestants to model drawings using computer-aided design software apps. AutoCAD 2024 or Inventor 2024. The drafting competition was divided between AutoCAD/Inventor Drafting and Architectural/Civil Drafting contests, and contestants were further split into beginning and advanced categories to tailor problems to their expertise level.
The Maze Machine design competition, held in Holt 131, tasked contestants to build a “Rube Goldberg−like device” that they would complete before bringing it to the day of the competition. Contestants were judged on if their device could successfully pass a golf ball from a starting through a course of lifting mechanisms, then lift the ball back to its starting point. Only one team competed in the Maze design competition this year, coming from Lincoln High School.
The robotics competition, held in Budd 221, had contestants program autonomous mobile robots to complete an obstacle course. The contestants’ robots needed to follow a set course while successfully avoiding obstacles in their path, all without the aid of remote control. Only two high schools entered contestants for the robotics competition, those being Calla High School and Edison High School.
For the last half of Engineering Day, contestants moved to the Tillie Lewis Theater for a Q-and-A panel with local engineers. Panelists included: Kimberly Megan Declaro Evangelista, Delta alumnus and mechanical designer in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Defense Technologies Engineering Division; Russell Knight Jr., a designer and contractor for the Nevada National Security Site and Jacob Siken, an engineering student from Delta.
Engineering Day concluded with an awards ceremony for contestants from each contest.
