FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - The second annual Northwest Arkansas BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology) Game Day will take place from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 6, at the Springdale High School gym. The BEST competition is designed to inspire students toward careers in engineering, science and technology by participating in a contest that is designed much like a sporting event.

This year's game is set around a specific task that is delivered in anonymous message: "The last rocket to leave your planet's surface is within three minutes of launch. As one of the four surviving alien life forms, your mission is to save your species by escaping from the planet. To do this, you must use a remotely operated vehicle to break into the blast zone."

More than 200 high school students from Northwest Arkansas, the Arkansas River valley, Tulsa, Okla., and Bowling Green, Ky., have been working diligently for the past six weeks to build a remote-controlled vehicle to accomplish that mission.

The teams met for the contest "kickoff" six weeks ago at the Bell Engineering Center on the University of Arkansas campus. At the event, team members and coaches simultaneously witnessed the unveiling of the top-secret game fields and learned what tasks that the radio-controlled vehicle — one that they would design and build — would have to perform. At the same time, each team received a box of identical odd parts, fasteners, glue and a radio controller for motors, which are the only items that can be used to build the robots.

Each team is assisted by a small group of technology coaches — volunteer from local industry and academia — who act as mentors. Each team provides at least one teacher-coach, but the robot is designed and built entirely by the students.

A BEST Mall Day held Oct. 24, two weeks prior to Game Day at the Fayetteville Northwest Arkansas Mall center court, allowed teams to see how their robots would perform on an actual game field. Mall Day also gave teams the opportunity to assess opponents' machines for new ideas.

"Seeing the opposing teams' machines allows students to spend the remaining two weeks of the competition making adjustments on their own," explained Bill Springer, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the U of A, and one of the NWA BEST founders. "It also helps teams in planning the important game day strategies."

Alma High School took top prize in the 1998 NWA BEST contest. Eighteen teams are joining last year's champs in the 1999 competition, including Bentonville High School, Berryville High School, Warren High School (Bowling Green, Ky.), Farmington High School, Fayetteville High School East Campus and West Campus, Fort Smith Northside, Fort Smith Southside, Green Forest High School, Kingston High School, Ozark High School, Pea Ridge High School, Prairie Grove High School, Rogers High School, Southwest Junior High School (Springdale), Springdale High School, Central High School (Tulsa) and Van Buren High School.

NWA BEST is sponsored by the UA College of Engineering, Green-Anderson Engineers of Fayetteville, the participating public schools and a number of local businesses and civic groups. More information about NWA BEST is available at the contest website at www.csci.uark.edu/best.

NT BEST is the founding group in North Texas that created the competition to inspire and motivate students toward careers in engineering, science and technology by providing a sports-like technology contest. Since beginning in 1993, the NT BEST hub has been joined by seven hubs consisting of 146 schools. The top teams of each hub go on to the Texas BEST contest.

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