Teams from Hicksville, Stony Brook and Bethpage were the big winners this spring in the LEGO and Tech Long Island competitions hosted by the nonprofit For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, known as FIRST.

Hicksville Middle School’s Meteorites Cubed team took home the Champion’s Award, which recognizes the team that best embraced tournament core values ​​while achieving excellence and innovation, during the FIRST LEGO League Challenge Long Island Championship.

The event tasked 21 teams to identify issues related to people’s lack of activity and to design new technology, or improve on existing technology, to help solve this problem. The teams submitted videos of their robots, answered questions from the judges and participated in 25-minute sessions to review their robot and their core values.

The SBS Bears team at Stony Brook School took home the First Place Award (First Place) and the Inspire Prize (First Place) at the FIRST Tech Challenge Long Island Championship, which tasked 20 teams to create robots that delivered goals in target areas, marked rings in a round objective and rings thrown to knock down targets.

Bethpage High School’s Regal Eagles team won one of three Chairman’s Awards, highest honors, at the FIRST Robotics Competition Awards Show / FIRST Robotics Competition Gala. This event tasked more than 100 teams from New York State and Quebec to build and program industrial-size robots.

The contests were held virtually and presented by Long Island School-Business Partnerships.

COLD SOURCE PORT AND NESCONSET

Solar competition

The students of Cold Spring Harbor Jr./Sr. Tackan High School and Elementary School in Nesconset won first place in a student solar competition coordinated by EmPower Solar, a solar energy company.

The competition, which drew more than 50 teams in Long Island and New York, asked participants to answer the question, “How much solar energy do you need to power your home or business and an electric vehicle?” ? Responses were submitted through posters for the elementary competition and YouTube videos for the middle and high school competition.

Cold Spring Harbor students Kathleen Engel and Sophie Talamas placed first in the high school division, receiving $ 500 scholarships. Tackan fourth-grader Vardhan Ravva placed first in the elementary school division, receiving an Amazon gift card for school supplies.

HUNTINGTON-SOUTH

Rocket finalists

The Aerospace & Aviation Club at St. Anthony’s High School was one of 100 national finalists in the 19th American Rocketry Challenge, which required students to design, build and fly a rocket that met specific parameters.

This year’s rules required the rockets to carry a raw egg to an altitude of 800 feet, stay aloft for 40 to 43 seconds, and return the rocket to the ground with the egg intact.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am of these students, especially this year,” said team moderator Mark Capodanno. “They were persistent, resilient, committed and determined to do their best despite all the successes and failures along the way.”

COUNTY-LEVEL

Elementary science fair

Seven Suffolk County students placed first in their grade level at an annual elementary school science fair sponsored by the Brookhaven National Laboratory. To qualify, the students first won fairs organized by their schools.

The winners were: Violet Radonis, Kindergarten, Pines Elementary School in Smithtown; Ashleigh Bruno, grade one, Ocean Avenue Elementary School in Northport, Celia Gaeta, grade two, Miller Avenue School in Shoreham; Emerson Gaeta, third grade, Fort Salonga Elementary School; Matthew Mercorella, fourth grade, Sunrise Drive Elementary School in Sayville; Grace Rozell, fifth grade, Ocean Avenue Elementary School in Northport; and Patrick Terzella, sixth year, Hauppauge College.

– MICHAEL R. EBERT

Michael Ebert is an education researcher and has worked for Newsday in various capacities since 2003. He was part of an 11-person team named 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalists for LIRR platform security issue investigation coverage. .