Monday, February 22, 2010

Local team honored at state contest (The Daily Reflector)

Local team honored at state contest (The Daily Reflector)

Local team honored at state contest (The Daily Reflector)

Posted: 22 Feb 2010 05:55 AM PST

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 A local team has managed to put together an award-winning performance during its first year of competition in FIRST Lego League.

The seven-member Malachite Mechanics, a group of 4Hers from the East Carolina 4H Club, took second place for team spirit in Saturday's statewide competition. Team members Cecelia, Alina and Cassie Suedbeck, Sam and Emma Christensen, Solomon Farris and Mary Hochberg were honored for enthusiasm, spirit, partnership, respect and professionalism. The award was one of 15 given at the FLL competition, held in Greensboro.

FLL, launched in 1998, is one of four programs that make up FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. The nonprofit organization was founded by inventor Dean Kamen to help attract young people to science and technology. While the FIRST Robotics Competition (see related story) is for high school students, the Lego League, which draws nearly 150,000 students worldwide, is open to competitors as young as age 9.

Homeschooling mom Jennifer Christensen, who coached the Malachite Mechanics along with Robert Hochberg, saw the competition as a great opportunity for her son and daughter, ages 14 and 9, to learn about science and technology.

"I am always looking for ways to give my kids fun, hands-on, real-life meaningful learning," she said. "My kids love Legos, so any chance I get to incorporate Legos into teaching that I do is a good one."

Since September, there have been countless opportunities to work with Legos. For the competition, students may use any Legos they choose to go along with an NXT programmable robotics kit that FLL provides to all competing teams. Their task is to build an autonomous robot to carry out assigned missions in two and a half minutes.

This year's competition, called "Smart Move," involved transforming transportation. Teams had eight weeks to prepare their robots to gain access to places and things while avoiding or surviving impacts.

Ironically, it was a real-life transportation challenge that gave teams extra time to complete their projects. Snowstorms helped delay regional competition until earlier this month, giving the Malachite Mechanics and other participating teams extra time to work to improve their robots' performance.

Still, the Malachite Mechanics hit a few roadblocks in competition. First, their robot stalled during one run of regionals, costing valuable time. Next, the team discovered a critical design flaw.

"This last change of robot design I think has really thrown us for a loop," team member Sam Christensen said last week. "We overlooked a rule that we discovered at the regional competition, and then we had to change the entire design of the robot."

This gave the team just one week to work with its newer, more compact design, affectionately named "Flatty Patty."

In addition to the robot challenge, students had eight weeks to analyze, research and invent a solution to a transportation problem.

The Malachite Mechanics selected the issue of distracted driving and suggested that cars should be outfitted with technology that would shut off a driver's cell phone once the vehicle began to move.

"FIRST Lego League focuses on them being innovative," Jennifer Christensen said. "It's really amazing the logic, the math and the engineering they have to learn. I just think it's awesome, and they have so much fun."

 

Contact Kim Grizzard at kgrizzard@reflector.com or (252) 329-9578.

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