A chair, 10 sheets of newspaper, a roll of string and masking tape brought seven mining engineering students at SIUC a first place award in a competition that took place in Orlando last weekend.

Yoginder Chugh, a professor and chairman of the Department of Mining Engineering, led the team of seven students to their first top honors ranking in this third annual competition.

They did an outstanding job of representing the department at this meeting, Chugh said.

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The students competed with 12 teams in this three-day conference and all teams were given a chair, 10 sheets of newspaper, a roll of string and masking tape.

They were given the instructions to build an objects using all of the props given to them that would hold a bottle of water 60 centimeters from the chair. The SIUC students built it most efficiently and were awarded first place for their efforts.

Students involved were:Brian Van Middendorp, a junior from Carbondale; Howard Thomas, a senior from Du Quoin; Andrew Ditch, a freshman from Johnson City; Arthur Don Buchanan, a graduate student from Knees; Souma Sengupta, a graduate student from India; Biao Huang, a graduate student from Carbondale; and Dwayne Faulkner, a senior from Decatur.