FOREST CITY - Arms extended and smiling, five Abington Heights students yelled out, "Team YOLO!"
The slang acronym stands for "you only live once," and Thursday, the students were living well.
The team received the best overall prize at a Project Lead the Way competition, which was hosted by Forest City Regional High School. Teams of students from Lakeland, Forest City, Delaware Valley, Abington Heights and Susquehanna Community high schools and middle schools spent about 2½ hours solving an engineering problem.
Students needed to devise a system to pump water from a full bottle on the floor into an empty bottle on a table above. Solutions used syringes, basters, tubing, duct tape and other supplies.
Some teams placed full bottles upright on a fixed base on the ground, but the Abington Heights team inverted their full bottle above a base made of a roll of paper towels, creating additional momentum.
It was the first time Jon-Paul Hernandez had competed, and he was impressed by the ingenuity of the other students.
"Even though everybody had the same problem, there were so many solutions," he said.
The junior was part of the Forest City Foresters team, along with sophomore Sonny Albright.
"They're pretty much a blast," Sonny said of the competitions. "There's lots of problem solving and critical thinking required."
Both students appreciated spending the day in a non-traditional, educational setting.
"It's hands-on," Jon-Paul said. "I learn best when I get involved. You can relate to it ... instead of reading how cool it could be if it happened."
Thursday's task, working against gravity with limited supplies, presented a challenge for many students.
"No one knew how to start," Brianna Benson, a senior at Abington Heights and a member of Team YOLO, explained.
Students were able to complete some research before they created and tested their designs, a fun process for Brianna, who said she is "obsessed" with math and science.
"This gave me the opportunity to experience the engineering field," she said. "That's actually what I'm going to college for."
Her teammate, Cierra Beck, a junior, added that the afternoon included a good balance of work and play.
"It was serious, but we had our fun, too," she said.
The Project Lead the Way program is a part of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics coursework, Forest City STEM instructor Jeffrey Earle said. He said PLTW encourages students to consider engineering, which has an intimidating reputation.
Lakeland and Forest City high schools will also be expanding their offerings in the fall, two of the 60 districts around the country adding a new computer science and software engineering course.
Contact the writer: rbrown@timesshamrock.com, @rbrownTT on Twitter