In Interview with Christopher Zamora third runner up and Tara Chklovski Founder of Iridescent to talk about the “GRAVITY Design Challenge”

               Warner Brothers partnered up with Iridescent, a science and tech non-profit organization to create the “GRAVITY Design Challenge” themed from the movie “Gravity” starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, in theatres October 4^th.

                Tara Chklovski Founder of Iridescent said when Warner Brothers reached out to them about the “GRAVITY Design Challenge” she said yes to partner up. “When they talked to us about this awesome movie in where Sandra Bullock is a space engineer and a problem solver, it aligned with what we do and the media is a very powerful source and it usually portrays the female in a very secondary role on this field, so it had a lot of potential for girls and so we decided to partner up.” explained Tara. Which this may be a good news for Iridiscent, since a 13 year old girl named Eiley Hartzell-Jordan from Carrboro, North Carolina was the winner of the challenge.
 

                The “GRAVITY Design Challenge” was hosted by Iridescent online science and engineering platform - Curiosity Machine, which enables mentoring scientists and engineers to give the participants feedback of their designs.  The challenge ran from August 12^th to September 10^th, in where it had the participation of more than 300 students from the ages of 13 to 18 years and the winner inventor had the chance of being at the “GRAVITY” premiere in New York and meet the stars of the movie.  This challenge consisted, on that the students had to answer 4 questions and build at least three components for a space mission: a launch mechanism, an orbit transfer mechanism and a gravity well that simulates the orbit.

                But the main ingredient for the judges (who are experts from the astrophysics field) to choose the three finalists of this challenge was to have creativity, challenge and being persistent explained Tara “Creativity was a great part on winning this challenge. Also, we looked at how did the students incorporated the feedback given by their mentors on their designs, which I think that’s the hard part, because the students were trying and trying and being persistence to make it happen.”

                And those attributes were what 16 year old Christopher Zamora a very smart kid and third runner up of the GRAVITY Design Challenge accomplished with his design and won 4 passes to watch the screening of GRAVITY with four of his friends and or family in a local theatre.

Christopher Zamora third runner up and Me

When asked about his experience during the process of creating his design for the Gravity Challenge, he said it was nerve wrecking.  “It was nerve wrecking, because I heard about this challenge late, in where I had to have it done in three weeks, so it came a moment where I wanted to finish it and have it done, because I didn’t want to fail, but now after my design won third runner up, I feel accomplished” explained Christopher.  And I’m very happy for you Christopher for that accomplishment.

Christopher Zamora and Design

                At the end of the interviews I asked Tara what was for her the fun part of the “GRAVITY Design Challenge” and she said it was watching the designs, because for her, it is the most exciting part, have an idea and see how different people think and work at there designs to make it happen and that’s what we were trying to do on this challenge.

GRAVITY starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock will be in theatres October 4.