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During the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge (Thermo Fisher JIC), the top 30 finalists, organized into six teams, engaged in a variety of STEM challenges. These challenges allowed the finalists to showcase their critical thinking, collaboration, leadership and problem-solving skills. The judges closely observed the participants during these challenges to assess their performance.

Early Sunday morning, Oct. 27, finalists from across the country took on the first challenge of the Thermo Fisher JIC 2024 Finals Week. , a Virginia nonprofit that provides STEM curriculum and opportunities for K-12 students, introduced the topic of solar panels to these middle schoolers.

Split into six teams, the finalists aimed to create a cost-effective solar-paneled home that could stay warm and sustain heat throughout the night.

Rochelle Sandrin and Lori Bedsole from JASON Learning gave students an overview of what to expect from the activity. The main theme of these challenges is learning to collaborate and leverage each team member鈥檚 strengths to overcome the problems.

鈥淪cience is not usually an individual pursuit,鈥� says Katie Boggs, Ph.D., head judge of the Thermo Fisher JIC. 鈥淚f you are a scientist or engineer, you’re going to work in teams. That鈥檚 what we鈥檙e going to do today.鈥�

After a brief introduction, the finalists dove into group discussions, exchanging ideas. They were given limitations and parameters for the challenge. Finalists went through the step-by-step process: first, designing what they wanted to create, considering the budget, collecting and analyzing data, and identifying areas for improvement.

After building and testing their one-room models, the finalists had an opportunity to collaborate with other teams to share their findings. Once everyone had learned something from a different group, Rochelle led a discussion on everyone鈥檚 experiences.

Some finalists鈥� homes absorbed heat but quickly lost it when the lamp, representing the sun, was turned off. Others had experienced losing heat while the lamp was on. This provided the perfect segue to learn how a battery could help maintain heat in a home after sunset.

Rochelle then introduced a video explaining how batteries operate and outlined the next part of the challenge: creating a battery to light up an LED light. The finalists learned that making a battery involves an oxidation-reduction flow between two substances. The challenge had many options of substances the finalist could choose from and after some time, the groups took note of their findings and discussed out loud what they learned and didn鈥檛 work.

The main takeaway from this first challenge was understanding each person鈥檚 strengths and how to apply them to the challenges. Some finalists had experience with solar energy and batteries, while others were learning for the first time. Just as in the workforce, scientists, engineers and innovators must learn from each other to solve problems.