Student Will Lark tastes the thrill of victory.

MIT's infamous Course 2.007 - known as "double-oh seven," for short - has been the bane of Mechanical Engineering majors for years. The course requires students to design and build a machine for a specific task. The semester culminates in a contest in which the students' creations battle for supremacy.

In "Teetering to Victory," FRONTIERS follows one group of 2.007 students from start to finish, as they design, refine and put their creations to the test. This year, the machines face off on a balance beam. The machine that successfully brings its side of the balance beam down - by whatever means necessary - wins. The constraints: All students are given identical boxes of parts out of which to build their machines, which must not exceed ten pounds and must fit back into the box when completed.

Alan meets some of MIT's creative contestants.

Despite the constraints, the students come up with a dizzying array of winning ideas. Some machines clamp onto the beam and attempt to knock their opponents off; some winch their ends of the balance beam down; others jack their opponents' ends up. This later design soon dominates the contest, and when two jacks square off, they both win and FRONTIERS witnesses a first in "double-oh seven" history: a "double win."

For more on this topic, see the web feature:
Young Inventors
FRONTIERS Contest