FRONTIERS: What personal characteristics make you good engineers?

JUSTIN: Creativity. When we were designing the boat, we just tried to keep it as simple as we could. We had to come up with pretty simple solutions for big problems. I'm pretty good at working within limitations and coming up with a way to solve a problem.

Each young inventor, including Will, spent many long hours perfecting their projects.

WILL: I think I have almost a sixth sense for how to go about things sometimes. I obviously don't know everything - that's why I'm in college. But I'm pretty good at finding common sense ways to go about things.

SARAH: I'm creative. I can come up with lots of different ideas. I don't lock into one idea. I'm also determined to make my machine work. I definitely was one of the people that spent more time in the lab making sure everything would work. I didn't think that I would do as well in the competition as I did. Just the fact that my machine worked made me successful.

FRONTIERS: How much time did you dedicate to preparing for the contests?

JUSTIN: As president of the Human Powered Sub TEAM I probably spend 30-35 hours a week on the team. In all truthfulness, I don't sleep much. It just takes a lot of work.

	Justin's sub, Phantom (seen here), finished in third place behind Logan's sub, Scuba-Doo.

LOGAN: Lots and lots of time. For the first two months of construction, all we had was a big pile of foam and nothing really to show for a lot of work. We divided up the work about 50/50. I probably worked 15, maybe 20 hours a week. Sometimes we worked on separate parts. Ed did a lot of the mechanical stuff, and I did a lot of the fiberglass on my own in my garage. Then when we had to do bigger stuff, like put the two halves together, we did it together.

WILL: At least a couple times a week I would just go in there in the early afternoons and just stay in there all evening. Time goes by real quick while you're in there. It was time consuming, but I didn't mind being in there. I can spend a lot more time in the lab than in front of a book doing a problem set.

SARAH: Once we started building, I spent a lot of time. I always tried to go to the lab at least a couple hours a day, ten hours a week. I would go down in between classes just so I could get something done. A lot of times I would go down to get something done, only to realize it couldn't be done. I would have to come back the next day and fix it. I definitely like going to lab better than coming back to my room and working on other work, but it was frustrating at times when I was going to lab to do something for the third time.

FRONTIERS: What kind of job would you like to have in the future?

JUSTIN: All I want to be is a submariner. If I can't be a submariner, there's the Engineering Duty Officer (E.D.O.) community. They work at shipyards designing their own stuff and approving designs by contractors. Amongst the E.D.O. community, there is a more specific group called the E.D.O. Dolphins. They are engineers who work specifically on submarines and that's all I'm really interested in.

LOGAN: I like building stuff a lot more than I like designing. I'd like to work with my hands. That's the part that makes you good at designing things - being able to look at it through all the stages of production, rather than just designing something and having somebody else build it. I like things that have to do with the ocean, so I'll probably end up building boats.

WILL: I've developed a passion for special effects and set design - not computer animation, but building the sets. The building is my big love. You really have to have the mentality that you can do anything. I know that sounds cheesy and cliché, but whatever you want to do, you have to focus all your energy and talents and go after that. Life is short and I refuse to do something that I'm not passionate about.

Sarah finally loses to Will DelHagen, who went on to win the competition.

SARAH: I'd love to be a general designer and design something for cars one day and something for the medical industry the next day and a toy the next day. Something like that where I could design anything that I wanted or anything someone needed. Designers like to make things easier or better in the car, better in the medical industry. To be able to make an impact in lots of different areas - that's my dream job.
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