Local Lego science teens headed to world championship

A group of creative area middle schoolers are headed to a world championship Lego competition next week after earning a second-place finish in Ohio.

The seven teens — four girls and three boys — come from schools in Lakota, Mason, Sycamore districts and from the private Bethany School in northern Hamilton County’s Glendale community.

They are one of only 108 teams worldwide invited to the next stage of international competition.

And the “Scientific Touch” First Lego League team won some more recognition this week from U.S. Congressman Warren Davidson, R-Troy. Davidson invited them to his West Chester Twp. office to see in person the project presentation they hope will impress the judges during the coming international competition in St. Louis.

Only the top two finishers in each state earn an invite to the First Lego League World Tournament running from April 26-29.

And while the state competition involves creating and operating a robot made of Lego toy pieces, the international competition is based on designing a science project with real-world applications and the teens went big with that mission.

They designed a skyscraper window reflection system to reduce the high incidents of birds flying into windows of the tall structures. Moreover, the window shadowing elements can also absorb and produce solar energy, reducing the heating and cooling costs for any building.

Davidson raved about the teens’ work while presenting them each with Congressional Certificates of Merit.

“It’s incredible,” the Congressman said after watching the students presentation involving a model skyscraper, large display boards of data, hand outs and examples of scientific analysis showing their project’s feasibility and cost effectiveness.

“You look at what these students are doing – you have seventh graders doing solid modeling and the research they did and the data. They were impressive,” he said.

West Chester Twp. resident Cozetta Vessel, mother of team member Sam, said the students were thrilled to come in second among 512 teams competing in Ohio to earn this shot at a world championship in their age category.

Sam agreed, saying that “getting to see and compete against the other teams from around the world” will be exciting.

Teams of students are coming from more than two dozen nations joining those from each American state.

Team coach Shirley Lee said, “it’s pretty hard to get to the world championship.”

“We are going against a lot countries and they (students) are really excited,” said Lee.

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