Take the Fluor Engineering Challenge!

Build a Volleyball Machine for a Chance to Win $1,000

Use limited materials to build a pair of simple devices that work together like a volleyball machine, and you might find yourself at the top of the 2019 Fluor Engineering Challenge score board. Plus, to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the annual Fluor Engineering Challenge, Fluor Corporation is awarding double the number of prizes. Your team's entry might win one of twenty $1,000 USD prizes for your school, afterschool program, or community organization!

Enter the 2019 Fluor Engineering Challenge for K-12 Students

Who can enter? The 2019 Fluor Engineering Challenge is open to K-12 students around the world. Students can enter individually or as teams of up to four students. Only one entry per team is allowed. There is no limit to the number of teams that can enter per school, afterschool program, or community organization. The more teams that enter from a school or organization, the greater the chances of the school/organization winning a prize! Afterschool programs and community organizations include any nonprofit organization that serves students, including, but not limited to, public libraries, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H, YMCA, and Boys and Girls Clubs. Students may participate on more than one team, but each team must use a different design.

What do I do? Build devices to launch and return a ping pong ball back and forth over a paper net without touching the ground. The goal is to send the ping pong ball back and forth, just like a volleyball game! The devices need to be built from the approved list of materials, which includes things like pencils, rubber bands, paper, tape, and disposable cups. The fewer materials used and the more volleys back and forth (following the challenge rules), the higher your score. Finish your design and submit your score before the March 15, 2019 deadline to enter the contest. Full details, including the building and launching rules, allowable materials, scoring, and testing procedures can be found in these four formats:

• Volleyball Machine Project: instructions for students of all ages working independently on the project (alone or in teams)
• Elementary School Volleyball Machine Lesson: lesson plan designed for use with third to fifth grade students
• Middle School Volleyball Machine Lesson: lesson plan designed for use with sixth to eight grade students
• High School Volleyball Machine Lesson: lesson plan designed for use with ninth to twelfth grade students

All four formats have identical rules and materials and can be used interchangeably. The lesson plans offer additional educator tools like age-appropriate worksheets and alignment with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

Where is the challenge happening? Students can do this challenge anywhere! The 2019 Fluor Engineering Challenge is designed as a fun hands-on engineering project to do at home, in the classroom, as part of an afterschool program, or as a community event.

When is the challenge taking place? Students may build and test their volleyball machines anytime now through March 15, 2019. Entries may be submitted February 17, 2019 through March 15, 2019. All entries are due by midnight Pacific Time (GMT-8) on March 15, 2019.

Why should I enter? Building devices to volley a ping pong ball back and forth is fun! Plus, there are bragging rights up for grabs. We will be posting top scores on our 2019 Fluor Engineering Challenge score board. Students from anywhere in the world, regardless of location, are eligible to participate in the competition to get their team name on the score board by completing the challenge and submitting their scores. Additionally, Fluor will award twenty teams, drawn at random from the geographic locations listed below, with a $1,000 USD check for their school, afterschool, or community program! Everyone in the eligible locations who follows the entry rules and submission process will be entered in this random drawing. You give your school or organization the chance to win $1,000 USD just by letting us know you took the 2019 Fluor Engineering Challenge, built and tested a volleyball machine, and tried your best.

Who is eligible for the $1,000 USD prizes? To qualify to receive a $1,000 USD prize, an organization must be classified as a U.S. 501(c)3 public charity, a public or private primary or secondary school, or an international nonprofit or non-government charity with a valid registration number. The organization must be located in one of the geographic regions where Fluor operates a community relations program (see Table above). An organization may enter as many teams in the 2019 Fluor Challenge as they desire. Each entry increases an organization's odds of winning, but an organization may only win a total of one prize. Homeschool students who win one of the random prize drawings will be asked to choose an organization fitting the above eligibility requirements to receive the prize money.

How do I enter? To enter the 2019 Fluor Engineering Challenge, build a volleyball machine following all the materials and testing limitations set out in the project for independent students or one of the lesson plans. Use the paper scoring sheet or Excel score sheet to calculate your 2019 Fluor Engineering Challenge official score. Then enter all of the information listed below in our web-based submission form by midnight Pacific Time (GMT-8) on March 15, 2019. This online entry form makes entering scores from many teams simple and makes sharing your submission with friends and peers via social media a snap.

• Team name (team names must be in good taste)
• Name of your school or organization
• Number of students on the team (teams may range from 1-4 students)
• Age(s) of the student(s)
• Gender(s) of the student(s)
• City and postal zip code where team members live or where your school or organization is located
• Two photos of the team's creations: 1) a close-up side view of both parts of the volleyball machine set up across the paper net and 2) a photo of the team showing off their volleyball machine (please make sure the photo is in accordance with your organization's photo policy)
• Team's final score

Be sure your entry contains all information listed above and follows all rules of the challenge. Only complete entries from the eligible locations will be entered in the random drawings for the $1,000 USD prizes. All complete submissions will be considered for the official 2019 Fluor Challenge score board.

Can we mention the challenge on social media? Absolutely! We'd love to see you share your student creations and videos on social media. Tag your posts with #FluorChallenge so others can see. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

Who do I contact if I have questions? If you have questions about how to make or score your challenge solution, please read our Volleyball Machine FAQ. If your question is still unanswered, or if you have a question about the structure of the 2019 Fluor Challenge, please email us at fluorchallenge@sciencebuddies.org.

Meet the Team of Fluor Engineers who Created the 2019 Fluor Engineering Challenge

Fluor employees who came up with this year's challenge include engineers (from left to right) Michael Bower, Tina Tajalli, Mark Thies, and Rafael Villegas.

Fluor holds a Friendly Competition between its engineers every year. The winning team then gets the honor of devising the company challenge for the next year.

Michael Bower, Tina Tajalli, Mark Thies, and Rafael Villegas, four engineers from Fluor's Southern California USA office, are the inspiration behind the 2019 Fluor Engineering Challenge. When they sat down to design the challenge, Michael, Tina, Mark, and Rafael wanted to pay tribute to the local beach culture. What they developed is an engineering challenge based on beach volleyball. In the challenge, two devices keep a ping pong ball (representing a volleyball) in play, going back and forth over a paper net. The result is a fun and sometimes wacky engineering challenge!

Although they come from different engineering backgrounds and have different jobs, Michael, Tina, Mark, and Rafael (along with many other engineers at Fluor) work together on big projects. It takes the combination of their different skills (along with those of other engineers at Fluor) to design and build complex systems like oil refineries and power plants. The ability to work well as a team helped them come up with the Volleyball Machine Challenge! Students can read more about Michael, Tina, Mark, and Rafael's jobs, hobbies, and what got them interested in engineering and then use this special career worksheet to explore the rich world of engineering.

Ball Launcher—Congratulations to the 2018 Fluor Challenge Drawing Winners and High Scorers!

More than 3,800 students from 10 countries participated in the 2018 Fluor Engineering Challenge. Challenged to create a ball launcher and receiver using everyday materials (like cups, pencils, ruler, tape, rubber bands, and paper), students devised and tested innovative solutions and launcher designs. After successfully creating a simple machine to launch a small ball made from aluminum foil, many students continued to test and modify their designs to try for successful catches with even greater launch distances. More than 1,390 teams submitted entries for the 2018 Fluor Challenge. All eligible team entries were placed into random prize drawings based on geographic location. Congratulations to the ten winning teams listed in Table 1 whose names were drawn from the eligible pools! Each of these teams earned $1,000 USD from Fluor for their school, organization, or afterschool program. Team School / Program Houston, TX Third Ward Kempner High School Greenville, SC Newton's 4 Launchers Monarch Elementary School Orange County, CA Team Hi Joseph Perry Elementary School Calgary, Alberta The Hamsters Chinook Council Scouts United States (including Puerto Rico) The Long Boomers LaGrange Elementary Survivors Jemison Intermediate School Survivors Rio Vista Elementary International Catapult Supernova Philippine Christian School of Tomorrow Space Potatoes Glenwood Elementary Super Cats Academie de la Capitale Table 1. Random drawing winners of the 2018 Fluor Engineering Challenge

Figure 1. A few of the teams who submitted Ball Launcher solutions for the 2018 Fluor Engineering Challenge

Top Scores for the 2018 Fluor Engineering Challenge

The Fluor Challenge is open to students in grades K-12. The top 10 scores, overall, for the 2018 Fluor Challenge are shown in Table 2. All scores are validated by Science Buddies staff based on submission photos, the Challenge rules, and follow-up with teams, as necessary. Regardless of score, all entries that met the geographic requirements were entered in the random drawings.

"My favorite part was the teamwork part, because I got to work with other smart minds to put a good working launcher together. The ideas we came up with to create a working launcher were great!"
(Team KWK)

2018 Fluor Challenge Scores by Age

Students entering the Fluor Challenge work in teams of up to four students. To recognize the hard work students did creating and testing their solutions and to give students a better sense of how their solutions and scores compare to other students of similar age, the tables and graphs below show the top scores and score distribution for submissions from ages 6-10, 11-14, and 15-18. (Note: The age used for each team is the average age of all members on the team.)

"The kids absolutely loved the challenge of discovering ways to not only launch further, but how to make their launches more accurate. As a teacher, I loved how each team had to discover what items to use and perform multiple trials to be successful."
(Teacher, Visual and Performing Arts Magnet School)

"My favorite part of the challenge was building and engineering the device. Trial and error was really fun because we got to improve our machine until we achieved our goal."
(Team The Juniors, Coppell Middle School East)

"It was fun to problem solve and find a way to make the ball go as far as possible with using the least amount of points. We also enjoyed building the launcher and testing."
(Team Silicon, Mauldin High School)

Figure 2. Some of the teams who submitted Ball Launcher solutions for the 2018 Fluor Engineering Challenge

Students Embrace the Challenge

Students who entered the 2018 Fluor Engineering Challenge had the chance to explore, firsthand, what it means to be an engineer and to collaborate with others to solve a problem and improve a solution. Here are a few examples of what students (and their teachers) told us about their experience doing this year's Ball Launcher challenge:

For additional information, quotes, and images from the 2018 Fluor Challenge, see Fourth Annual Fluor Challenge Celebrates Engineering.

Continue to Challenge Yourself

Even though the 2018 Fluor Engineering Challenge is over, students can still try their hands at the Ball Launcher engineering activity! Simply follow the online instructions to gather materials, design, build, and test your version of a ball launcher and catcher.

If you are looking for even more fun engineering challenges, check out the 2015, 2016, and 2017 challenges and come back early next year to find out about the 2019 Fluor Engineering Challenge!

If you have questions about the Fluor Challenge, please email us at fluorchallenge@sciencebuddies.org.

Meet the Team of Fluor Engineers who Created the 2018 Fluor Engineering Challenge

Fluor employees who came up with this year's challenge include process engineers Temitope Jabaru (left), Linh Nguyen (middle) and Tom Wooley (right).

Fluor holds a Friendly Competition between its engineers every year. The winning team then gets the honor of devising the company challenge for the next year.

Tom Wooley, Linh Nguyen, and Temitope Jabaru, three engineers from Fluor's Houston USA office, are the inspiration behind the 2018 Fluor Engineering Challenge. When they sat down to design the challenge, Tom, Linh, and Temitope wanted to pay tribute to Houston's recent history as the location of the 2017 NFL Super Bowl Championship. What they developed is an engineering challenge based on American football. In the challenge, the ball launcher represents the quarterback (the player that throws the ball), and the ball catcher represents the receiver (the player that catches the ball). The result is a fun engineering challenge!

Do you know what process engineers like Tom, Linh, and Temitope do? According to Linh, process engineers are the "architects" of a refinery or plant. "Process engineers determine the design of the plant by figuring out how the plant needs to work in order to take a starting material and transform it into the desired end product," explains Linh. Linh says that process engineers are responsible for determining what equipment is needed, what 'size' everything needs to be, and how the pieces will all fit together. "The design that process engineers develop forms the 'blueprints' (drawings and specification sheets) of the plant," explains Linh. Using the blueprints they create for a project, process engineers then work with other disciplines (like Mechanical, Piping, Control Systems, Electrical, and Construction) to complete the project. According to Linh, collaborating with other teams is how process engineers "bring their design to life and build a successful plant!"

To become process engineers, Tom, Linh, and Temitope all trained as chemical engineers. Despite having different interests and hobbies, they share a love of math and chemistry that led them to their engineering careers at Fluor. Students can read more about Tom, Linh, and Temitope and then use this special career worksheet to explore the rich world of engineering careers.

Follow the Flow Challenge—Congratulations to the Drawing Winners and High Scorers!

Over 3000 students from 11 countries participated in the 2017 Fluor Engineering Challenge. Starting with a few simple materials (cups, aluminum foil, tape, and popsicle sticks) students came up with creative ways to build a water flow system to move beads through terraced layers. A small sampling of the hundreds of entries can be seen in Figure 1. We were impressed with the range of solutions students came up with, as well as the innovative spirit and 'can-do' attitude demonstrated by teams around the world! All eligible team entries were placed into random prize drawings based on their geographic location. Congratulations to the ten winning teams listed in Table 1 whose names were drawn from the eligible pools! Each of these teams earned $1,000 USD from Fluor for their school or afterschool program. Team School / Program Houston, TX Engineering Robotics Southwest Glen Mission Greenville, SC The KLT Waterworks Sevier Middle School Orange County, CA Outlawed Kennedy High School Calgary, Alberta The Wall Chinook Council Scouts United States (including Puerto Rico) Raindrop Los Alisos Intermediate The Waterworks YBH of Passaic Galaxy Rabbi Pesach Raymon Yeshiva International Girls Rule Engineering Club École Victoria-Albert School TerraSys De La Salle Santiago Zobel School Pealed Potatoes Wisdom College Table 1. Drawing winners of the 2017 Fluor Engineering Challenge

Figure 1. A few examples of water flow solutions built during the 2017 Fluor Engineering Challenge.

Continue to Challenge Yourself

Even though the 2017 Fluor Engineering Challenge is over, students can still try their hands at the Follow the Flow engineering activity! Simply follow the online instructions to gather materials, design, build, and test your version of a terraced water flow system.

If you are looking for even more fun engineering challenges, check out the 2015, 2016, and 2018 challenges and come back early next year to find out about the 2019 Fluor Engineering Challenge!

Meet the Team of Fluor Engineers Who Came Up With the 2017 Fluor Engineering Challenge

Fluor employees who came up with this year's challenge include structural engineers Christopher Reybuenan (left) and Benson Angeles (right), & civil engineer Leann Ababon-Sanggalang.

It is Fluor's tradition to hold an internal Friendly Competition between its engineers every year. The winning team gets bragging rights, ownership of the official trophy for the year, and the honor of devising the next challenge. When Team Wabu, pictured, from Fluor's Manilla office in the Philippines won, they knew what they wanted to do next:

"The team came up with an idea [to] showcase something related to the abundant Filipino heritage, hence, the Banaue Rice Terraces, a man-made, historical structure that the Philippines is very proud of. With this challenge, the team hopes that it can stir up the minds of fellow engineers to come up with their best designs and at the same time have fun."

– Leann, Benson, and Christopher, members of Team Wabu

With the help of three other colleagues from the Manilla office, the engineers on Team Wabu spent many hours perfecting the challenge details. Team Wabu found that there was one major similarity between their everyday engineering jobs, winning the Friendly Competition, and designing the next one—engineering works best as a team effort! The result of their team effort was a rousing competition between fellow Fluor engineers. Now it is your turn to gather your team, collaborate, and have fun!

Marble Machine Challenge—Check Out the Drawing Winners and High Scorers!

The 2016 Fluor Engineering Challenge, held February 11 – March 11, 2016, asked students to design marble machines capable of sorting a mixture of 6 mm and 12 mm spheres into separate cups. With over 600 entries worked on by more than 1700 students, the range of solutions was enormous! We were impressed by the ingenuity and perseverance students demonstrated, and enjoyed seeing each and every entry. Figure 1 shows just a small sample of the hundreds of marble sorting machines students created. All eligible team entries were placed into random prize drawings based on their geographic location. Congratulations to the ten winning teams listed in Table 1 whose names were drawn from the eligible pools! Each of these teams earned $1,000 USD from Fluor for their school or afterschool program. Team School / Program Houston, TX The Dragons Attack Poverty in Richmond, TX Greenville, SC MCK Mauldin High School in Greenville, SC Orange County, CA Peanut Butter and Jelly Mission Basilica in San Juan Capistrano, CA Calgary, Alberta The Happy Stallions Notre Dame High School in Calgary, Canada United States (including Puerto Rico) Legends Los Alisos Intermediate in Mission Viejo, CA The Undecided Coppell Middle School North in Coppell, TX Indian Creek A Team Indian Creek High School in Wintersville, OH International Bobbington Traditional Learning Academy in Delta, BC, Canada The Cercons TBD Vicfia Fluor Team TMS School in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada Table 1. Drawing winners of the 2016 Fluor Engineering Challenge

Figure 1. A few examples of the marble sorting machines built during the 2016 Fluor Engineering Challenge.

Continue to Challenge Yourself

Even though the 2016 Fluor Engineering Challenge is over, the Marble Machine Challenge remains available for all students to try their hands at. Simply follow the online instructions to gather materials, design, build and test your version of a marble sorting machine. Curious about how your machine stacks up to entries from the 2016 Fluor Engineering Challenge? Figure 2 shows the distribution of scores across all entries received. The highest peak in the graph corresponds to the 17% of entries that scored less than 500 points. In general, most entries scored 4580 points or less. The top ten highest scores are listed in Table 2. No matter what your score, a marble machine that is built of the limited materials allowed and can successfully sort even some of the spheres is something to be proud of! If you are looking for even more fun engineering challenges, check out the 2015, 2017, and 2018 challenges and come back early next year to find out about the 2019 Fluor Engineering Challenge! Figure 2. 2016 Fluor Engineering Challenge score distribution.

Top Marble Machine Scores Team Age(s) Score Christopher's Clemson Sorters 16 9880 ABET 18 9785 thebom.com 13 9715 Lejit Pandaz 15-17 9655 Knukelés 13-14 9645 Angelica Awesomeness 13 9590 The Rebels 12-14 9530 DanRich Duo 15 9515 CNT 13 9495 Rutabaga 15 9470 Orange Extreme 9-11 9460 Table 2. 2016 Fluor Engineering Challenge top scores.

Balloon-Powered Car Challenge—Check out the Winners and High Scorers!

Designed to help students experience how real-life engineers design solutions and to show students first-hand how fun engineering can be, the 2015 Fluor Engineering Challenge asked students to design, build, and test their own balloon-powered cars using limited materials. Science Buddies and Fluor were thrilled to see the huge range of creative solutions engineered by K-12 students around the world in response to the challenge. Figure 1 shows a small sampling of the hundreds of balloon-car photos we received. Congratulations to the team from Coppell Middle School East in Coppell, Texas, whose team entry won the random drawing for the 2015 Fluor Engineering Challenge and earned $1,500 USD from Flour for their school! Fluor offered additional prizes in each of four locations (Canada, Orange County, Houston, and Greenville). More information about those winners and photos of their balloon-cars can be seen here.

Figure 1. 2015 Fluor Engineering Challenge balloon-car samples.

Continue to Challenge Yourself

Even though the 2015 Fluor Engineering Challenge is over, the Balloon-Powered Car Challenge remains available for all students to try their hands at. Simply follow the online instructions to gather materials, design, build and test your version of a balloon-powered car. Curious about how your car stacks up to entries from the 2015 Fluor Engineering Challenge? Figure 2 shows the distribution of scores across all entries received. The highest peak in the graph corresponds to the 20% of entries which scored between 4001 and 5000 points. In general, most entries (61% to be exact) scored 6000 or less points. The top ten highest scores are listed in Table 1. No matter what your score, a balloon car that can successfully roll along is worth a pat on the back! Figure 2. 2015 Fluor Engineering Challenge score distribution.

Top Ten Balloon-Car Scores Team Name Student Age(s) Score TESLA 2015 14 34,000 N/A 14-16 19,420 Anonymous 14 17,340 GTR 12-13 15,500 High Speed 15-16 13,340 David Crockett Middle School 11-14 12,290 Rollin' 15 11,190 Naomi 11 10,460 The Schilling Shuttle 11 10,420 The Jensen Jalopy 11 10,090 Table 1. 2015 Fluor Engineering Challenge top ten scores.

If you are looking for even more fun engineering challenges, check out the 2016, 2017, and 2018 challenges and come back early next year to find out about the 2019 Fluor Engineering Challenge!

How the Annual Fluor Engineering Challenge Started

Fluor engineers design and build some of the world's toughest projects, ranging from Shell's Carbon Capture and Storage (CSS) Quest project to the CALTRANS San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Construction project. For a bit of company fun and friendly competition, Fluor engineers challenge each other every year in a global, company-wide engineering competition. Teams of Fluor engineers have been going head to head in yearly competitions for decades, and each year more than 500 engineers around the world participate in the company challenge.

In 2015 Fluor decided to bring the spirit of their yearly employee competition to students. As part of their celebration of Engineers Week, Fluor launched the first annual student-centered Fluor Engineering Challenge to inspire students K-12 to get hands-on with a fun engineering activity during Engineers Week (February 22-28, 2015). With the help of Science Buddies, Fluor's "Moving on the Moon" internal engineering challenge was transformed into an engaging and student-friendly hands-on engineering project that could be easily introduced in a classroom or afterschool program—or done at home. With cash prizes and bragging rights on the line, more than 350 teams stepped up to the plate from around the world. What came next was amazing to watch: a parade of engineering solutions, innovation, and diverse thinking from students focused on creating their own balloon-powered cars with limited materials. Teachers and students alike wrote in to tell us how much fun they had and how eager they were for more challenges:

Ongoing Vision for the Fluor Engineering Challenge

The annual Fluor Engineering Challenge is designed to help students experience how real-life engineers design solutions and to show students first-hand how fun engineering can be. Every year, in partnership with Science Buddies, Fluor transforms one of its own internal employee engineering challenges into a student-centric challenge. The challenge is launched in time for Engineers Week so that teachers and afterschool organizations can use the challenge with their students. The challenge is open to all students around the globe with prizes awarded in a more limited geography. At the end of the approximately four week challenge window the winners and top-scorers are announced and prizes are distributed. The challenge itself lives on though! Previous challenges can be accessed at any time through the Science Buddies website. Individual students and groups are invited to try the previous challenges any time they want—students can measure how their solution stacks up to others students' by calculating their own score and comparing it to that of teams who competed during the challenge window. We invite everyone to try their hand at these Fluor Engineering Challenges:

• 2018 Fluor Engineering Challenge: Ball Launcher
• 2017 Fluor Engineering Challenge: Follow the Flow
• 2016 Fluor Engineering Challenge: Marble Machine
• 2015 Fluor Engineering Challenge: Balloon-Powered Car