An amazing team of students from West Linn High School earned seventh place at the Destination Imagination Global Finals Competition, on May 22-27, 2017, in Knoxville, TN. The 10th grade team was among the 8,000 students representing more than 1,400 teams from every state and several countries that advanced to participate in Global Finals 2017. The team, Eli Dodd, Aracelli Doescher, Jacob Groh, and Landon Eves, used creative problem solving to complete technical and theatrical solutions, which they designed and built over the course of the year. They also competed in Instant Challenge in which they used teamwork to overcome obstacles.
Destination Imagination prepares students for their future careers by teaching them the creative process, project management, teamwork, and critical thinking skills. This year, the students won 7th place in the Scientific Challenge, called Top Secret, in which the team had to design two cryptography machines which would translate message, one which the team had to translate onsite with an unknown message drawn during the presentation.
To solve these challenges, the team designed and built two cryptography machines. One which used lights and programming from an Arduino to create a light display code that could only be translated using a defraction lenses. The other cryptography machine was a welded, metal tray with motors that pulled a cash register receipt that was marked by a marker in a morse-code like language. A sensor read the code and translated it onto a reader board. This particular system was so complex with both welded, homemade hardware and programming, it earned the TOP technical score in the world competition, against 85 Senior Level Teams.
The team presented these machines while integrating a creative story about how Amelia Eggheart crash landed on an island of egg beings many years ago. Trapped on the island, she had to create some cryptography machines in order to translate the egg language. Some chefs from the Faberge Café land on the island and meet Amelia, who was disguised as a Local Yolkel in order to fit in. The egg puns stole the show and the world was impressed by the musical talents of this scientific and artistic presentation.
