After several months of relative silence, the Innovation Lab has finally been humming, cranking, and whirring again this semester as SLUH’s STEM Club worked to put the finishing touches on projects for a busy competition season. Over the last two weeks, a flurry of important competitions ensured the space was in constant use. 

First, STEM Club members participated in the annual Billiken BEAMs competition hosted by St. Louis University’s civil engineering program after school on Feb. 26. In the competition, students from local high schools put their building skills to the test by manipulating a few flimsy strands of balsa wood into a structurally sound bridge capable of holding dozens of pounds. 

The competition looked much different this year, as it was put on as a Zoom webinar instead of a live tournament, but for junior JP Torrack, it was still just as fun.

“I really enjoyed it this year because the process felt a lot more complete. We actually put a lot of time into it and worked after school almost every day,” said JP Torrack. “Plus, it was a great group of guys.”

After several admittedly poor results in this competition in years prior, the SLUH team was anxious to improve and put in significantly more work this year. 

“Last year, we kind of just guessed on a design and built it in a week or two,” reflected junior Richard Taylor. “This year, we tested and left plenty of time to build.”

The work showed. This year the SLUH team’s bridge held 34 pounds, over 20 pounds higher than last year’s team. Still, the strong performance was not enough to win. However, even after missing the podium, Taylor is proud of the results.

“My goal for the weight was 20 pounds, but it held 34 pounds, so I was really happy with our performance,” said Taylor.

In fact, this year’s improved performance coupled with the significant loads held by the winning bridge this year only further inspired the team to try even harder next year.

“I’m really proud of our work because we learned a lot this year,” Torrack said. “I am confident we will continue to improve next year and hopefully even win.”

After the rewarding results of the BEAMs competition, the STEM Club prepared for their next competition, TEAMs, which is a national STEM competition put on by the Technology Student Association. After completing an essay submission, the TEAMs group met on campus on Feb. 27 to complete the multiple-choice test and engineering challenge required for the competition. The multiple-choice questions focus on a variety of different science topics and are known to be difficult.

 “The questions are quite challenging. Even though they give you most of the information, there's a lot of thinking involved. Luckily you're able to converse with your fellow teammates for help which took off a lot of pressure that we would have had otherwise,” said junior Tom Nguyen, who led this year’s TEAMs group.

The engineering challenge, which centered on how automation can help the Covid response, followed the test and applied students’ knowledge to the real world by asking them to design and craft a model using everyday supplies like popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners. This year, they still completed a build, but instead of displaying it live, they had to record a video showing off their prototype to judges. 

To respond to the prompt, the TEAMs group built a mechanism out of cardboard and string that could successfully be used to transport paper from one box to another, an impressive feat given the 40-minute time limit. Even though results are still not out for the nation-wide competition, Nguyen is looking towards next year’s event.

“In the end, I feel decently confident about a performance,” said Nguyen. “Hopefully, we can get even more teams to do this competition next year because I think it's a very fun competition, but you don't have to do much preparation for it.” 

Finally, after a busy string of acronymed competitions, the Robotics team capped off a project more than a year in the making last week, as they were finally able to compete with the robot that was so tragically put out of commission last year due to Covid quarantine. This year, the annual First Robotics Competition, the main event for SLUH Robotics, asked students to repurpose their robot from last year, which no school got to use, and record a video of it performing certain tasks, like shooting a ball at a target or having the robot run through a course entirely from code, with no human control. 

The robotics team finished filming last week, after many late nights in the iLab due to machine malfunction, and even though it was certainly better than nothing, many members noted their disappointment with how this year’s competition shaped out.

“It was still cool to work on the robot, but we didn’t get to build a new robot which was definitely less fun. Plus, because of Covid, we couldn’t really meet as much,” reflected senior Franco Schmidt.

“I didn’t like it as much as the regular process,” agreed junior Matthew Leight. “In the regular building process, you get to make your own idea and go through the testing and all that’s fun. At least we got to do something this year.”

Despite this and other setbacks, Robotics was still happy with their submission this year.

“I still think a lot of our challenges went well, even though it was sort of rushed at the end and some things fell apart that weren’t supposed to,” said Leight. “I think we got a good performance in, and hopefully we’ll get something out of it.”