Judges Scoring

Welcome Judges. Please click on the linked scoring rubric and score the Mechanical Wonders Presentations.

Thank you again for your time and effort to meet our students via this online platform. There is a place for you to pose comments and questions. Students will be able to respond within the classroom at a later date to those ideas, so don't worry! Your ideas will be discussed with our students.

Please reference the scoring instruction video that we have included for you to make sure you feel comfortable with this online website.

If you have any questions at all during the review process on December 14-15, please feel free to contact Mr. Juan Clague (Jclague@episd.org) or Mrs. Johanna Sherman (jmdaniel@episd.org). We will also have a video zoom link to field any other questions you have. That link will be sent to you via email.

The custom here at Chapin High School for the Project Lead The Way Principles of Engineering students is to create fall semester projects that display many of the concepts they have learned so far, including mechanical and electrical systems, along with project design.


This year, each team of six students will design and fabricate a minimum of three electrically powered mechanisms in an exhibit that will communicate, entertain, inform, demonstrate and/or illustrate a topic, idea, subject, or concept. Sound, lights, and a surrounding environment will be included in this exhibit, which will be made for the entrance of a children’s hospital waiting room.

Some of the concepts all POE students should know by now:

  1. -mechanisms, including the 6 simple machines (lever, pulley, wheel & axle, inclined plane, wedge, and screw) and gear trains (including sprocket & chain and belt & pulley)

  2. -energy, work, and power, including the use of motors

  3. -electricity

  4. -the engineering design process

  5. -construction techniques (mainly with the Fischer-Technics system)

One of the main challenges of this project is to use the concept of resistance, whether electrical (through lights and other resistors) or mechanical (through friction or weight) to control the speed at which the motors spin the designated object in the display to make it as realistic as possible.

Another big challenge is the actual decoration of the display in the theme. This is one skill that is not reinforced in the POE classroom since these students are expected to be future engineers and not necessarily graphic artists. Nevertheless, students were encouraged to explore their team talents in artistic ways to support the overall effectiveness of the project.

We hope you enjoy the displays and thank you for your participation.