Some of the 8th grade students in Adrienne Thieke's class in the Lyceum Program at Lincoln Middle School took on a weighty project for this year's science fair.

"They were required to look at a real world problem, come up with some sort of potential solution that they could explore through the scientific method," said Thieke.

     One group in particular, Christopher Fregly, Zhao Li and Brandon Kim stood above the rest.
     The idea for their project came after a Fregly family trip to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston where they saw something called the A.R.E.D. machine.

"Which is used for astronauts to exercise in space, that that's how I found out about this," said Christopher Fregly.

    Li and Kim liked the idea and they began the project to find out one thing about this machine.

"They were using the machine, but they didn't know how well it was working, or if it was working at all," said Brandon Kim.

     The group used a computer model called OpenSim to simulate forces on the human body and they determined NASA's machine could work better for the lower half of the body.  
     They moved on to the regional level where the project won best in show and earned them a spot in the state competition.

"Basically the same thing, it's just a lot larger, and more competitive," said Zhao Li.

     The project took 2nd place at state but they weren't finished yet.
     The group went after a professional audience.

"I wrote an abstract and they edited it, my dad edited it, people from NASA edited it, we sent it to the conference at we got accepted," said Fregly.

     So they will head to Puerto Rico for the American Society of Mechanical Engineering's Conference.
     An amazing accomplishment.

"They don't realize that theres people who try to put papers in conferences, thats what they do for a living, and dont get them accepted. so for a 3 8th graders, its pretty impressive," said Thieke.

     Three 8th graders with an out-of-this-world future.
     Mike Gismondi, TV20 News