Baltimore engineering students are getting ready for world competition in Arizona

A group of Merganthaler Vocational Technical High School engineering students is gearing up for a world competition in Arizona after they qualified for the World KidWind Challenge.

The students swept the podium at the Maryland KidWind, a regional competition hosted at the University of Maryland in College Park last month.

The competition tasked teams to build wind turbines, and judges assessed the designs, presentation, and engineering capabilities.

WJZ met several members of the team at their workshop at Mervo High. For a lot of them, an interest in engineering started early.

"It came from a lot of tinkering, a lot of inventing, as my parents would say," said engineering student Deylon Moy-Joseph. "I guess I ended up deconstructing a lot of my toys when I was a kid."

Andrew Johnson-Moore said his interest started in movies.

"Chappie, I, Robot, Real Steel: they all [had me think] I can build that," Johnson-Moore said.

While this is Mervo's third year in a row sweeping the podium at a regional KidWind competition, the team still accomplished a new first.

"We won the instant challenge. We did amazing on our presentation, we got the highest in our division, which led to a perfect score," Moy-Joseph said. "The first time that happened in Maryland, apparently, for the 12 years they've been having this competition."

The students range from sophomores to seniors. To build for competition, it takes a lot of collaboration, resulting in the sharpening of skills that go beyond Mervo and KidWind competitions.

"We all think differently. I wouldn't knock on anybody else for thinking differently from me," said Hassan Murray. "We all have different ideas."

The World KidWind Competition in Phoenix, Arizona, begins May 18.