West Hills College Lemoore students take on 55 teams to win engineering contest

WHCL’s team, “Demolition Crew,” took on teams from Clovis Community College, Madera Community College Center, Reedley College, and Mechanical Engineering students at Fresno State who are taking Introduction to Engineering courses. The team was led by WHCL Engineering/Physics Instructor Dr. Jiaxin Zhao.

“We are so proud of WHCL’s Demolition Crew, and we are grateful for our Engineering Professor, Dr. Zhao’s leadership,” said Dr. Kristin Clark, President of West Hills College Lemoore. “Dr. Zhao is an amazing instructor, and we couldn’t be more thrilled for him and our extremely talented and bright students.”  

The team consisted of five students: Vigomar Kim Algador, Julian Diaz, David Lewis, Eduardo Quezada, and Yara Vazquez Delgado.

For this year’s engineering challenge, student teams were asked to build a tower/bridge that spanned over a 10" gap, at least 36" tall, and held at least 10 pennies on the top. The performance of the structure was scored by how tall it was, how many pennies it held, and if it used limited materials.

WHCL’s final tower was taller than all the other designs, and their final score was 17% higher than the second-place winner.

“I consider this team's win as a testimony of the wisdom and dedication of our students,” said Dr. Jiaxin Zhao, WHCL instructor, and the team’s supervisor. “The team was super determined to win since the challenge rules were released earlier this semester. They spent a great amount of time practicing and refining their design.”