Competition Details

2024 KU High School Design Competition Summaries

Aerospace

In a natural disaster, sometimes emergency supplies must be brought in by plane. In a rural disaster, the runways can be short and landing the plane as close to the target zone is very important. That challenge is what competitors will be trying to complete: land a glider as close to the target destination as possible.  

Your team will be applying your knowledge of aerodynamics to create a glider that can travel a set distance to land on a targeted landing zone. You and your team will have the opportunity to test your glider’s capabilities by sliding your glider off a ramp positioned high in the air. Stay tuned for the test of a lifetime!

Biomedical

For first responders during emergency scenarios, it’s important to first ensure personal safety. To that end, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) such as helmets are necessary. For this event, teams will design helmets that reduce the force imparted to the head. This will have to protect from potentially multiple impacts and be easy to wear while doing difficult work.

Though helmets frequently must meet many standards, the characteristic being tested in this High School Design Competition event is impact attenuation- the ability to reduce the maximum acceleration caused by an impact the head experiences.  In this event, the helmet will be impacted by swinging an anvil be made of a foam block.  As a result of the momentum transferred during impact, the head may be displaced some distance.  The ability to predict this displacement for the system will also be evaluated.

Chemical

Join us in a transformative project where you'll be at the forefront of solving one of the most pressing issues of our time, carbon emissions and byproducts. Our project focuses on a power plant that is near a lake and nature reserve. Communities utilize this lake for their drinking water, fishing, and agriculture. Emissions generated from the power plant enter the atmosphere and can become incorporated in the water cycle, which can then enter water bodies through precipitation. A recent rainstorm has led to a large amount of ash and soot from the powerplant to enter runoff into the lake. Can you create a groundbreaking portable water filter to improve water quality and accessibility for thousands of people?  

Civil

You just moved to a new city and got hired by a structural engineering company who strives for sustainability and groundbreaking designs. They want you to design a building that can withstand high magnitude earthquakes because the city lies over an active fault line. Your task is to design a building model, test it, and then present it to your bosses on why you chose that design and how it is sustainable and ready to withstand frequent and high seismic activity. 

Students are tasked with designing the frame of a city style building that can withstand high magnitude earthquakes. Buildings will not only be tested on the amount of shake force the shake tables provides, but also how much load it can support and the overall weight of the structure to incentivize innovative light weight design over raw material use.   

Computer Science

Understanding the intersection of computer science and meteorology grows increasingly chaotic, from using data to predict how hot the day might be to the scales of simulating the spread of wildfires over a plot of land using supercomputers. The challenge of data processing is what competitors will be trying to complete: creating an application that processes real weather data. 

Mechanical

Welcome to the heart pounding Tornado Chase competition! Teams will come together to design and build the ultimate vehicle capable of chasing down a tornado. We are calling all engineers to design a car that can stop as close as possible to a designated tornado target point. Join us in this quest to take on nature’s fury, proving that in the eye of the storm, innovation and determination reign supreme! 

The goal is to have a vehicle that is as accurate as possible and adaptable to different distances. This will be tested by having vehicles travel from your ramp to a qualifying distance and then to a target set some distance away. The best score will be awarded to vehicles that meet the qualifying distance and come to a full stop closest to the target point.