Excitement filled the dining hall on Tuesday, April 27, as XPRIZE organizers announced the 2016 middle school competition winners.

Seventh graders Rio Hundley, Kaeli Mcleod, Chloe Richards and Sally Song were named Grand Prize winners.

“Our creation was a bag that slows down the ripening of fruits,” Song said. “The bag would contain rice and bamboo charcoal. Rice and bamboo charcoal absorb the ethylene gas, so that the fruits do not ripen as quickly. This would cause less fruits being thrown away and wasted.”

The Grand Prize winners received prizes like a robotic dinosaur, wearable technology, a “magic lunchbox” and a gift card to The Arrow, Archer’s student store.

“XPRIZE had heard about our STEM Symposium. They reached out and said ‘we’d love to do a partnership with you,'”Middle School Director Karen Pavliscak said. “We looked at who had the time and how the structure of the schedule went: XPRIZE and X-Block were a perfect match.”

The winners also get the opportunity to work with Mary Sue Milliken,  co-chef and owner of Border Grill, to learn about what it is like to work in a restaurant and prepare food.

“Everybody has good ideas, but few people realize the potential of their ideas by designing, reiterating and exploring how those ideas may actually come to life,” Pavliscak said. “As Steve Jobs said, ‘Everything you see around you was thought up, designed and built by someone’. The girls in XPRZE became those someones that designed and created a solution.”

When Song found out that her group won, she said “I knew we could do it, guys! Our idea was a great one!”

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled XPRIZE as “X-Prize.” The article also said the winners went to the California Science Museum, which did not occur. (May 26, 2016, 2:01 p.m.)