Kickoff was Amazing! 1/8/12

Details

Published Date

Kickoff was great!  I always enjoy getting together with the entire team.  First we enjoyed a team building challenge.  Each year, our engineering mentors create a fun LEGO engineering challenge.  We work in teams and then test our results.  This year we built a bridge out of LEGOs.  Teams were split into two parts and each half had a bag of LEGOs.  We came together to create on paper a bridge using those parts.  Now for the real challenge!  We each had to go back to our side, use our drawing to build our half of the bridge.  Then when our turn came to test our bridge, we had to be able to snap the two halves together without using any more pieces.  The bridges were tested using hanging weights.  Much tougher than we thought.  We learned the importance of knowing your materials, good drawings (CAD),  incorporating everyone’s ideas, and unfortunately, the process of trial and error.  We had fun though.

After that we watched Kickoff.  Not only did we learned this year’s robot challenge, but new members were exposed to, and hopefully impressed by, FIRST founders and supporters that spoke during the presentation.  We all ate lunch and then it was off to the CAD room for some brainstorming.  After discussing the game rules and strategy, we got into groups to work on some design ideas.  We came back together and each group presented its concept.  This gave us all much food for thought.  Monday after school we will meet again to, hopefully, finalize a design.  Whooo, long day!

By the way, it was so much fun seeing the team again this year! Can't wait until next time!