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Pacific Ridge students from left Jaden Cohen, 16, Selina Carandang, 15, Chloe Kim, 16, and David Leschensky, 15, show off their prototypes of a dice roller for the NASA Hunch competition. Courtesy photo
Pacific Ridge students from left Jaden Cohen, 16, Selina Carandang, 15, Chloe Kim, 16, and David Leschensky, 15, show off their prototypes of a dice roller for the NASA Hunch competition. Courtesy photo
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Pacific Ridge students shoot for the moon in NASA’S Hunch program

CARLSBAD — A student’s family vacation to Huntsville, Alabama, has inspired a group of four Carlsbad high school students to launch their prototype hardware into space.

Pacific Ridge School students Chloe Kim, 16, Selina Carandang, 15, Jaden Cohen, 16, and David Leschensky, 15, are developing a zero-gravity dice roller through NASA’s Hunch program in hopes of easing astronauts’ living conditions in space.

If the group passes its upcoming design review on March 6, the students will be invited to the finals in April at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“When an astronaut comes back from space, and they have suggestion … and it’s not a vital concept for a NASA engineer to work on, it will be outsourced to a high school like ours,” Leschensky said.

Leschensky said he was on a family trip to Huntsville and visited the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, where he saw an advertisement for NASA’s Hunch program. The student contacted individuals at NASA to get more information and immediately started building a team.

Leschensky recruited classmates Kim, Carandang and Cohen from the school’s robotics team for the project. First, the foursome reviewed the program’s requirements and areas of interest, settling on games and building a prototype to allow astronauts to “roll” dice in space.

Due to a lack of gravity in space, the challenge with board games using dice is obvious — the dice would never stop rolling. So, the group, gathering input from active astronauts and NASA engineers, devised its creation using applied force in a container in the shape of a spacecraft.

The astronauts shake the object and then push down on a plunger, or spring, to stop the dice from “rolling.” The bottom of the object is clear so the astronauts can read the dice.

Carandang said the dice could have any number of sides and use multiple dice.

“(Astronaut Eugene Gordon) didn’t like that in space, you couldn’t roll dice in space or using online dice simulators,” Cohen said. “(Gordon) wanted us to create a dice roller that would work in zero gravity.”

NASA’s Hunch program consists of 2,575 students from 277 schools in 44 states and has sent 1,340 items to the International Space Station. The project-based learning program is intended to develop innovative solutions to problems posed on the space station, according to the Hunch website.

These include design and prototype, software, hardware and biomedical science. For the Pacific Ridge students, games were an area they felt they could leverage their strengths and come up with a design that makes it into space, Cohen said.

Kim said while a dice roller may seem insignificant on the surface, the team researched the positive impacts of dice games, such as teamwork, mental exercise, reduced anxiety and increased bonding.

The team also polled fellow high school students to get insight into dice rolling. According to the poll, 96% of respondents liked the feel of dice in their hands, watching the dice roll and anticipating the outcome.

“The project strives to encapsulate that feeling and excitement of rolling dice on a board game rather than clicking on a computer,” Kim said. “It’s like when you play a game on a Zoom call. Of course, it’s not as exciting.”

Alphana Hobbs, head of upper school and a computer science teacher, said he’s proud of the students for taking the initiative and being creative with an outside project. Hobbs said the students’ project is a positive example of students working on a passion project and time management skills.