National Engineering Design Competition

This year , MESA USA announced a new National Engineering Design Competition project: the Windmill Energy Challenge (WEC). CSU Fresno MESA piloted a version of this project last year. After some revisions, it will now be the official national competition for the next three years.

Windmill Energy Challenge

In the WEC, teams will design and build a windmill (or windmills) that will capture and use the available wind energy to complete a number of tasks:

Mechanical Power: Greatest mass raised 75 cm in the least amount of time
Wind-to-Vehicle Transfer: Greatest average speed achieved by the defined vehicle through the track distance
Electric Power & Wind Direction Response (high school only): Greatest average power output from the define generator/electrical load during a 60 degree change in wind direction

Besides these tasks, students must also prepare an academic display, an oral presentation, and a technical paper. Click here to view the Windmill Energy Challenge rules.

There are several WEC competitions throughout the spring:

Preliminaries: Held in March at CSU Fresno, with the top three teams at each level (middle school and high school) advancing to Regionals.
Regionals: Held in April at UC Santa Cruz, with the first place middle school and first place high school teams advancing to the state competition
State: Held in May at UC Santa Barbara, with teams from each of MESA's four regions competing for the top spot in California

The national competition will be held in Colorado in June 2010. The top middle school and top high school teams from California will compete against MESA students from Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington at the national competition.