INVENTIONeers! Abound
At LEGO Contest

More than 90 enthusiastic kids took part in the LEGO Super Saturday Challenge at the Provincial Museum of Alberta in Edmonton. Sponsored by APEGGA, the July 25 contest asked participants to create a futuristic gizmo in 30 minutes using LEGO blocks and parts. The inventions ranged from the practical to the whimsical. The volunteer judges (see photo right) from APEGGA and the Alberta Research Council saw everything, including a far-out alien landing pad, an environmentally-friendly greenhouse, a complex transport system and a nifty brain transfer unit.

More than 90 enthusiastic kids took part in the LEGO Super Saturday Challenge at the Provincial Museum of Alberta in Edmonton. Sponsored by APEGGA, the July 25 contest asked participants to create a futuristic gizmo in 30 minutes using LEGO blocks and parts. The inventions ranged from the practical to the whimsical. The volunteer judges from APEGGA and the Alberta Research Council saw everything, including a far-out alien landing pad, an environmentally-friendly greenhouse, a complex transport system and a nifty brain transfer unit.

Six winners were chosen based on creativity, originality and engineering design. Congratulations to the INVENTIONeers! — Rocco Locascio (San Jose, California), Brendan Capel (Edmonton), Shane Ford (Spruce Grove), Jason Visser (Morinville), Christopher Visser (Morinville) and Stacy Brown (Grande Prairie). Each received a T-shirt, LEGO set and certificate provided by APEGGA. The winning gizmos were on display for the remainder of the LEGO exhibit.

In addition to amateur LEGO builders, there was a LEGO celebrity present. Thirteen year-old Mike Borowski (see photo below) of Calgary recently won the Canadian LEGO championship in Vancouver beating five other finalists. At the national contest, he built, in two hours, an underwater laboratory complete with a motorized rotating observation tower and a crane with lights and sounds. For the Edmonton LEGO event, he helpedjudge, and put together a model crane and a six-feet-tall tower that survived an earthquake test on a vibrating platform. Mike’s building expertise may be genetic. His dad is APEGGA member Andrew Borowski, P.Eng., a senior civil/structural engineer at AGRA Monenco Inc. in Calgary.

APEGGA sponsored a second Super Saturday Challenge Aug. 22. P