Students use imagination to reach their destination

Students from around the world are at Iowa State University this week for the “Destination Imagination” competition. Ryan Alto, a fifth grader from Maryland, helped design his team’s small-scale roller coaster which features a loop, a corkscrew and a jump.Alto’s team learned basic physics, like Newton’s laws of motion.Mike Johnson is the adult manager of Alto’s team. He says the kids do the entire project on their own and deserve all the credit.Johnson says the kids spent about 250 hours on the project.At 2:30 this afternoon, the team will set up their roller coaster and perform a skit with Newton and Einstein characters talking about the laws of physics and motion. The higher the speed of the ball which travels on the roller coaster, the bigger their score. The Maryland team will compete against 38 other teams from around the world, including Venezuela and Korea.