Who says it takes a huge bank-roll to make technologically advanced gadgetry?

Not nine students from Hartnell College’s Rockets and Robotics Club, who won the “Biggest Bang for the Buck” award at the Marine Advanced Technology Education International Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Competition at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UC San Diego from June 26-28. That award went to the team that spent the least amount of money on a vehicle that performed well at the competition.

In their first time at the international competition, the Hartnell College team placed 13th overall, and tied for sixth place in the engineering presentation.

“I am so proud of our students, who performed so well in this international arena that included not only other community colleges but also large universities,” said physics instructor Dr. Pimol Moth, one of the faculty advisors for the team. “They really kicked butt in the engineering competition!”

This year’s event, at which 27 college and university teams competed in the Explorer class, required teams to build an ROV that could perform three missions related to hydrothermal vents found at mid-ocean ridges and technologies used to study the deep-sea environments. Those missions were to: (1) Free an ocean bottom seismometer from the sea floor; (2) Collect up to three lava samples; and (3) Measure the temperature of hydrothermal vent fluid.

The teams were judged on the quality of their engineering technical report, engineering presentation, poster presentation, and the successful completion of the three mission tasks. Hartnell scored 240.3 points in a field whose scores ranged from 34.5 to 405.7.

Hartnell’s team also was advised by science technician Tito Polo and biology instructor Dr. Jeffery Hughey.

Participation in the competition was made possible through the support of the NASA-Curriculum Improvement Partnership Award. For more information on the competition, please visit the website at http://www.marinetech.org/rov_competition/ or contact Dr. Pimol Moth at 831-755-6893.

Hartnell’s science and math programs have enjoyed unusual success in the last several years. The physics club was named an outstanding chapter of the Society of Physics Students for the 2006-07 school year, one of only two community colleges in the country to receive that honor. In November, a Hartnell engineering student won a $10,000 per year scholarship from NASA, and in February, seven science students won National Science Foundation scholarships. Last summer, NASA gave Hartnell its Partnership Award of Excellence of 2007 at a national symposium.

In the fall, the college will open the Hartnell College Science and Math Institute, led by Dr. Jesse Cude, emeritus physics instructor who received the City of Salinas “City of Champions” award last November for the tremendous contributions he has made to the area during his 30-year teaching career at Hartnell.