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<p>No need to give them a hand, they made one.</p><p>For the second year in a row, Michael Grebeck and Chase Leach won first place in the BEST (Butwin Elias Science and Technology) awards at Meyers High School. Also for the second year in a row, the two didn&#8217;t have a fully functioning version of their painstakingly-developed winning entry.</p><p>Last year, it was a mini quad-copter drone with a broken propeller and motors that balked when the remote control was activated. This year, it was a small hand made of 20 pieces that were custom-designed and manufactured with a 3-D printer, with three motors operating the fingers by pulling fishing lines connected to the tips (rubber bands pulled them back when the motors reversed).</p><p>Alas, one line was broken and other fingers barely reacted to the tug of the mini-motors.</p><p>But as Adam Iseman, Meyers Class of 2007, has said repeatedly since the awards funded by the Iseman Foundation were launched, it&#8217;s about who has the best idea, not the best prototypes.</p><p>Iseman, a successful electrical engineer whose career took him to Boeing and Apple on the West Coast, created the foundation to honor his teachers <a href="http://www.adamiseman.com/iseman-foundation-1" target="_blank">and provide academic opportunities for youth</a>.</p><p>And the team of Grebeck and Leach &#8212; good name for an engineering firm, by the way &#8212; certainly had exhibited a lot of ingenuity in making four articulated fingers and a thumb, attached to hand that hid the three tiny motors. All told, they estimated, the pair had poured about 130 hours into the project.</p><p>&#8220;It took the whole school year,&#8221; Grebeck said.</p><p>Other winners included a hovercraft and a motorized skateboard powered by a cordless drill. One of the three young women who had built it, sophomore Alana Germano, conceded the design was a bit unstable: a board with a regular skateboard two-wheel truck on one end and a small bicycle wheel with a cog driven by a chain turned by the drill.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s pretty dangerous,&#8221; she admitted, though she added her younger sister did ride it a short while, using a string that stretched down the drill trigger to turn it on.</p><p>First place earned Grebeck and Leach a $2,500 award, or $1,250 each. The foundation gave away awards for the top five places: $2,500 for first, $1,000 for second, $500 for third, $250 for fourth and $150 for fifth.</p><p>They gave the same amounts for the Caffrey Wells Fine Arts awards.</p><p>Fifth-place art winner Kaede Goodeliunas stood proudly near three walls she had painted in colorful geometric shapes using colors she said were proven to be relaxing. Why these walls? &#8220;I spent my whole junior year staring at this space every day,&#8221; she explained.</p><p>Iseman said third place was won by the author of a fictional account of a school shooting. He conceded reading a piece on that topic by a ninth-grade student was &#8220;hard to take&#8221; because it is something the students should never need to contemplate.</p><p>And first place in art went to junior Calista Uher, who wrote a fictional diary covering a full year. She dubbed it, simply: &#8220;365 Days.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Meyers High School STEM students Michael Grebeck and Chase Leach demonstrate a robotic hand they took first place for in the BEST (Butwin Elias Science and Technology) awards. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/web1_TTL053118meyers3-2.jpg</photo0><caption0>Meyers High School STEM students Michael Grebeck and Chase Leach demonstrate a robotic hand they took first place for in the BEST (Butwin Elias Science and Technology) awards. </caption0><photoCredit0>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/web1_TTL053118meyers1-2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Channelle Sanchez, Lataisha Jenkins and Alana Germano run their drill-powered skateboard as Adam Iseman looks on at Meyers High School. Alumnus Iseman visited to present the BEST (Butwin Elias Science and Technology) awards. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/web1_TTL053118meyers1-2.jpg</photo1><caption1>Channelle Sanchez, Lataisha Jenkins and Alana Germano run their drill-powered skateboard as Adam Iseman looks on at Meyers High School. Alumnus Iseman visited to present the BEST (Butwin Elias Science and Technology) awards. </caption1><photoCredit1>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Meyers celebrates student success in science, arts</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Guydish</p><p>mguydish@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Fake hands and real fears: Annual awards given at Meyers High School