Designing an empennage -- in layman's terms, the tail section of a jet aircraft -- was a breeze for seven Thomas Worthington High School students who captured second place in the Governor's Cup State Level Challenge.

"Our team took second because of the remarkable job they did utilizing the tools provided to them to solve the challenge," said technology teacher Rod Pierce. "Each student had an area of expertise and they did their job when it needed to get done.

"The students were judged by the report they compiled, which contained the results of their work as well as research and processes that led to a final result," he said.

The Governor's Cup is the state level of the annual Real World Design Challenge, sponsored by the United State Department of Energy's Office of Science. This year's theme was aviation fuel efficiency, with students designing a business jet tail.

The winning Thomas team included seniors Matt Tischer, Ryan Montag, Dustin Stasel, Joey McEnery, Ben Grutsch and Karthik Hari and sophomore Matt Truesdale.

Pierce said the team started its research with a trip to the Ohio State University Airport, along with a visit to the Aeronautical and Astronautical Research Laboratory.

The team also consulted with an aviation design specialist from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and conducted online and library research.

"Once the designs were narrowed down to a couple of choices, the team started to build the designs using provided software from NASA and our CAD software, AutoDesk Inventor," Pierce said. "Building a tail section proved to be a challenge, but the students learned a lot about the CAD software."

Once the design was completed, it was transferred to a second CAD program, which had flow analysis software embedded into it.

"This is where we did the aerodynamic testing of the designs," he said. "These results were then inputted into an analysis program provided by Cessna Aircraft that analyzed the data and computed a result to our objective function. Once this was complete and the team was satisfied with the results, all the information was compiled and put into a report."

Pierce said the biggest challenge for students was understanding the challenge.

"It was very complex and they spent many hours just figuring out what they needed to do before they could start," he said. "Another challenge was learning to use all of the new software. The contest organizer graciously provided teams with several thousands dollars worth of industry-standard software and the teams had to figure out how to use with minimal assistance.

"The students also had to learn how to make the software work together, which was a great obstacle because of the complexity of the software and the design," he said.

Time also was a factor.

"Our state entered the challenge late, so we were very pressed for time," Pierce said. "We had to meet before school, after school and on weekends. If we could have had a few more days, we could have really completed something spectacular."

Pierce said most of the students are from the district's Project Lead the Way engineering classes.

"There were times when I looked at the task before the teams and thought, there is no way we will be able to get all of this done before the deadline," he said. "But at 10 p.m. the night of the deadline, the students finished up the report and e-mailed it in.

"I couldn't be prouder of the job they did," he said. "I strongly believe that if the community of Worthington could have seen these kids in action, they would feel really good about the value of their educational dollar. These are some very capable and motivated kids."

Pierce said he's looking forward to entering the Real World Design Challenge next year.

"We learned a great deal about aviation design and about the contest itself," he said. "With this knowledge, and one returning letterman, we feel we can have an even better result next year."