I have a coaching question for the group and I'd be interested to hear some perspectives from current and former coaches.

My team has opted to tackle a very difficult, and currently unsolved problem this year.  They learned about this problem when they interviewed their expert sources and decided to give it a shot.  I'm all for tackling hard problems.

What's happened since then is that they have done a ton of research.  I feel like they understand the problem very well and I've been working with them about how to articulate what they've learned.  

Their 'solution' to the problem is much more theoretical than we've done in previous years.  Due to the nature of the problem, they can't really build or test anything without a NASA sized budget.  Once of the keys to their solution involves some college level electrical engineering knowledge that they don't have.  They know what they want to do, but they lack the tools to be able to do the calculations to figure out the particulars of the design.

As a coach, how should I coach them through this?  My gut says that they should just lay it out there for the judges and hope they appreciate the difficulty of the problem, but I'd hate for them to get low marks on their project for not having a rigorous design.  I could find an Electrical Engineer to help them with the calculations, but I feel like that goes against the 'kids do the work'.

Thoughts?

Frank Levine