Morse High School chemistry teacher John Maskarinetz sprung a large and relatively nerve-racking engineering challenge on his honors chemistry students after they returned from April vacation.

It was a project that would end without guaranteed success. The goal was for 76 students in all four classes to complete a fully functional submarine in what they came to call the “Project Goliath Tiger Fish.”

There were even three sophomores who served as project managers: Eli Goodrich, Alex Gates and Sarah Meyer-Waldo.

“I was a little over- whelmed but also excited,” said Meyer-Waldo. “It was a little weird because it’s a chemistry class and we were presented with this engineering project, but definitely excited to see what we could do with it.”

The students were split up into 16 different groups to tackle the project and they included construction and design, video and fundraising, records, and there was even a poetry group. Students had to raise money and purchase the material, design the submarine and build it from scratch.

“You have to have an all across the board skill set,” said Goodrich. “This isn’t just chemistry. This is electric, this is water-proofing, this is quite a bit of physics. A lot of mathematics and then computer stuff; music, poetry — it’s every category you can think of is part of this.”

Meyer-Waldo said Maskarinetz “wanted to give us more of a real-life experience of working on a real project and having to communicate through different teams in charge of different aspects.”

And have it not always work out the way you hoped, Goodrich added.

The students said most of the project took place over the course of four weeks, but the brunt of the work happened in a couple weeks — all outside of their regular classes.

The students had started on one design and had to move onto a more simple design. There was a lot of improvising, they said. There were 17 people involved in the design and construction itself and three additional people in charge of testing it. Many group members’ involvement crossed into other areas of responsibility.

Goodrich said as a project manager he was a facilitator and acknowledged it could be hard to get classmates motivated.

With 76 kids, most involved in sports, “it was really hard to schedule meetings and find times for everyone to meet together at once,” Meyer-Waldo said. It was after school and early, before school.

Tested at the Bath Area Family YMCA, the submarine floats and moves across the water but students struggled with making it submerge.

All three said it made them better leaders and working with 76 people, let them see students’ skills and strengths come out.

“When you’re given any opportunity in life you really want to take a leadership role,” Goodrich said. “No matter whether you succeed or fail, it’s good to have that initiative.”

Maskarinetz has assigned the project before, but it’s been a few years.

“I work with some wonderful educators, but my background in chemical engineering and computer science makes me approach things a little differently than some of my colleagues,” Maskarinetz said. “I believe that writing needs to be engaging not arcane, I believe students can work on complex problems and figure out solutions and most importantly, for this project, I know that students should try hard projects that may not have a guaranteed solution.”

dmoore@timesrecord.com