NORMAL - It's not certain whether Mitch Rogers will invent a better mousetrap, but the University High School junior know he can build an effective mousetrap-powered boat.

As part of his Principles of Technology and Applied Physics class, he was given a mousetrap and a challenge.

Technology teacher Brad Dearing challenged his students to build a boat powered by the spring-loaded rodent killer. The goal was to move the boat forward 12 feet in a long, narrow tank filled with water.

Rogers of Bloomington and Amanda Rehtmeyer of McLean teamed up to make the sturdy, white Styrofoam boat. They attached a long lever to slowly turn a propeller.

It worked and the boat conquered the challenge.

"The biggest thing we learned is not to kill our partners," joked Quinn Wilson, a junior who pointed to his boat on a shelf. It wasn't working yet.

"They did learn teamwork," Dearing clarified with a smile Tuesday as students tested their boats.

While physics students often learn the principles of science during lectures and prove those principles in labs, this class accepts the principles and applies them, Dearing said.

"It's more hands on," he said.

The students learned the physics of acceleration and the engineering skills to apply the concept to technology.

Some of their design decisions were based on science and some were more random. "I painted it green because that was the first spray paint I could find," Bryant Carlson of Bloomington said.

The junior used compact discs, paint sticks, Styrofoam, and pine to make his version of a paddlewheel mousetrap boat. It moved about three-quarters of the way down the tank Tuesday.

Although these boats did well, they likely won't replace a pontoon-style, gear-driven boat now displayed in a glass case in the school's technology department. That mousetrap-powered boat was made five years ago and still maintains the record of several laps of the 12-foot tank.

No one managed that feat, or even two laps, at Tuesday's demonstration.

Students in other physics classes make mousetrap-powered cars.

No matter what the students create, Dearing says he likes incorporating engineering into both math and science classes. It helps students see the practical reasons for what they learn and how to apply those principles to solve other problems, he said.