PA Kids to Study Aviation Energy Use

How cool is this?

Pennsylvania is among the first 10 states to announce a partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy on the Real World Design Challenge, which will be initiated in the 2008-2009 school year. Eventually, all U.S. states and territories will be invited to participate.

The Real World Design Challenge enables high school students to take on engineering challenges in a team environment by asking them to address an issue facing one of the nation’s leading industries. This year’s challenge focuses on more efficient energy use in aeronautics.

Teams of students and a teacher will develop solutions to the challenge, and those solutions will be evaluated by scientists, engineers, college and university faculty and teachers. The best solution in each state will be announced by each governor at an awards ceremony, and the winning team in each state will compete in a national challenge held in Washington, D.C.

To aid the effort, high school teachers trained in design and global engineering will each receive approximately $1 million worth of professional engineering software donated by the Parametric Technology Corporation and Flomerics Inc. The Department of Energy and the Federal Aviation Administration will provide science and engineering mentors, and Hewlett-Packard will provide computer servers to host the software and facilitate collaboration between participants.

Read the whole thing here.