>> reporter: as for liva pierce... they finished second. the objective for all the students was that this activity would somehow bring them closer to designing an energy generating device of their own. >> the robot competition was really successful. kids are really, i think, they've internalized the design process. they know it's an ongoing process. they know they need to engineer their designs and constantly revise and get feedback. and so we're on our way. >> reporter: by early december, students were on to the second leg of their journey: learning the science and social issues that would be at the heart of their invention. and the path teachers choose to take students there, an eight- week-long interdisciplinary study of wind power. science teacher peter hill: >> we started with the wind turbine. how do these things work? so we took apart a motor and we said, well, there's magnets and wires in here. how do magnets and wires interact to generate electricity? >> reporter: to make the learning go deeper, in tech-ed class students built work