Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette From left, Lake Linden-Hubbell High School seventh-graders Olivia Shank, Rebecca Lyons, Chloe Daniels and Jenna Beaudoin discuss the eCYBERMISSION project their Yooper Lights team will bring to the Nationals competition.

AKE LINDEN — For most of the school year, students this far north are walking to school in the dark. Lake Linden-Hubbell High School seventh graders are heading to Washington, D.C. with a purpose in mind.

The seventh-grade eCYBERMISSION team — Olivia Shank, Rebecca Lyons, Chloe Daniels and Jenna Beaudoin — previewed its presentation for its upcoming Nationals competition at the Lake Linden-Hubbell Public Schools board meeting Monday.

The group designed and tested LED reflectors for students to attach to their backpacks. Inspiration came from Daniels, whose little sisters walk to school.

“Little kids don’t pay much attention to where they’re going, so we wanted to make something so that they could be safer,” Beaudoin said.

The reflectors were tested against plain reflectors and no reflectors. All test subjects were able to see the LED reflector and the control group with no reflector from every testing distance.

“This means that people walking or driving would see the LED reflector before the plain one,” Beaudoin said. “When we monitored students walking to school, no one was wearing a reflector. Therefore, we feel that there’s an opportunity to educate students.”

eCYBERMISSION, a competition sponsored by the U.S. Army, is intended to show sixth- through-ninth grade students real-life applications for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) principles.

The group began working in October. Much of the typing and practicing of the speech was done at the school. Testing of the reflector was done on a back road, using only college students and adults due to weather conditions.

The students designed their reflector at Michigan Technological University; the 3-D printing was also done there for ease of transferring files, said advisor Gretchen Hein.

As for the circuitry, students designed it and built it on a breadboard before sending it off to Calumet Electronics for printing. They then soldered the components onto the board.

Yooper Lights is the only Upper Peninsula team among the 20 teams going to Nationals. About 6,000 teams participate nationwide. The Yooper Lights first sent in their report to judges, who approved them for the regional competition after review.

Teams present their work to the public from 1 to 4 p.m. June 20. They will be viewable at youtu.be/6CSAR2rnKUk.

People will be able to vote for a People’s Choice winner at ecyber19.hscampaigns.com. The winning team will receive iPads.

Winners will be announced at an awards banquet from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 21.

That too will be livestreamed at youtu.be/AsqgSnLaisY.