Students make remote vehicles to fix oil spills

Pretend you're a developer for a cash-strapped company that produces remote-operated underwater vehicles, and you've been given the task to build an efficient, affordable model capable of fixing a burst oil pipeline a few thousand feet below the ocean's surface.

You're in charge of everything: designing the least expensive fully functional vehicle possible, creating an itemized budget, building it and, finally, testing the product in a real-world situation.

The above were the directions given by Pinckney New Tech High School teachers Joel Craig and Rich Lamb to their 65 GeoDesign students last month, having developed the project based on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010, also known as the BP PLC oil spill.