LENOIR, N.C. – More than 40 teams from throughout the state competed on Saturday, April 5 in downtown Lenoir as part of the fourth annual NC Gravity Games.
The STEM-education racing extravaganza was co-sponsored by Google and Appalachian State University.
The forty-six teams that competed hailed from schools in towns from Mount Airy and Murphy to Durham and High Point to Goldsboro and Rockingham. Hundreds of spectators turned out to make this year’s games the biggest yet.
A variety of tech prizes, including Chromebooks, Raspberry Pi Computer Modules, Discovery Place tickets and other rewards went to the 2014 champions:
In the kit car division
1. Walter Johnson Middle School (Morganton)
2. Granite Falls Middle School (Granite Falls)
3. Granite Falls Middle School
In the engineering division
1. Walter Johnson Middle School (which set a new Gravity Games speed record of 28 seconds)
2. Hibriten High School (Lenoir)
In addition, the NC Gravity Games featured new or expanded scientific exhibits or participation from Charlotte’s Discovery Place in Charlotte, the Catawba Science Center in Hickory and the NC Science Olympiad. A giant Jumbotron captured the action and updated the brackets for spectators.
A signature event of the NC Science Festival, the NC Gravity Games are a real-world experience in which students from across the state use STEM lessons (science, technology, engineering and math) to build and race their own gravity-powered cars in downtown Lenoir, home to Google’s data center.
