Weeks 7,8,9

Wow, the weeks are going by fast! 

we've definitely made some great progress in all fields.  The mission and building groups have started completing missions and i think we're ready to start putting things together.  

Despite all that we've had many many issues with our robot, so much so that i had the team build a secondary robot just in case..that too works well.  

But i think we're buckling down with our initial design and making it work no matter what! 

The research team has been working on  scripts and design for their presentation, but we definitely need to clean up and make sure that our information is good and correct and that the stuff we have is clean.  

Time is getting short, we have to prepare for the tournament no matter where we are...all that coming soon! 

also we've gotten saturday space at suffern HS! what a great treat, so much space to utilize and i wish there were more teams for us to work with there.  We almost left a robot there, luckily someone was able to pick it up and bring it back! 

antartica

Glaciers are tons of snow that start to move out and down because they are so heavy.
They cover over 10% of the earth.
They erode the ground beneath them.
75% of the world's fresh water is frozen into glacier water!
Glaciers originate on land from snowfall that doesn't me in the summer after several years!
http://www.cedarville.edu/academics/education/resource/schools/chca/3socsas/glaciers.htm
The Antarctic ice sheet is losing as much as 36 cubic miles of ice a year.
The continent holds 90 percent of the world's ice, and the disappearance of even its smaller West Antarctic ice sheet could raise worldwide sea levels by an estimated 20 feet.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/02/AR2006030201712.html

Holland flooding

Holland is flooding
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOOrnbrVxIM

Weeks 5&6

Its getting hard to keep up,

but week 5 and 6 mark the finishing of the robot and really getting into the stages of programming. We've also taken a break from the research project, but i'm planning on dedicating some time for just research through our 7th and 8th weeks.




We're really having trouble programming a robot that i think should be a little simpler to program. I'll write something for them to help get directions for both the rear wheel and the steering wheel at the same time. Also i think that they'll need a program to straighten the wheels more reliably every time








I did give them a bit of a break tho, we did a 'freebuild' day where i let them go at it with parts, but in an attempt to teach them something i broke out Isogawa's Toranomaki. Although they didnt finish some of the projects it was cool to get them to understand and use some mechanisms out of LEGO. Maybe they'll get a chance to finish their projects at another time. Imagine that though, i didnt get pics of that day, but i got most of everything else.

Also i may get an assistant to the team, it'll be great for the team to have another person there who knows their stuff. Next 2 weeks...i'll be splitting up the teams, good luck Bricktron Black and Blue.

Presentation # 2 & #3 India and Piermont

Presentation #2

• Monsoon floods killed 59 in the past 3 days and 2,364 since June
• Authorities are using motorboats and military helicopters
• house collapse has killed 14 people
• 6 feet of deep water
• 4.7 in. fell in 5 hrs.
• Piermont's location is a penninsula in the Hudson River
• it is south of the tappan zee bridge
• piermont is on the west bank of the hudson river
• some ideas for peventing water damage are : water drainage, dam/ levees, water paths, more storm drains, lifting houses.
• some of these ideas may never work but water drainage and more storm drains are the most possible of them all
  

Presentation #3

Or reasearch project is to:

1. Define a problem
2. find a solution
3. find a place in another part of the world with that problem
4. look and compare their solutionns to our solutions

We have found out:

1. Flooding in Piermont
2. UNKOWN
3. India (maybe chicago but we do not have much information
4. UNKNOWN

Some other information is:

• The Brahmaputra River floods Northeast India
• 170 villages were in waist deep water
• "Kaziranga National Park, home to tigers, elephants, panthers, bears, and the world’s largest population of one-horned rhinoceroses, was also more than 50 percent flooded, said BBC."
• Rain flooded the Mahanadi River in Orissa India
• "Not only is the Mahanadi clearly swollen in this image, but its northern neighbor, the Brahmani is also flooded. "
• The Brahmani river has flooded almost 1,850 villages and is said to be the worst flood in 50 years.
• The floods killed 29 people and affected mor than 4 million

Week 4

Ever progressing, we're 4 weeks in meaning we've had only 4 or 5 meetings .. i'm trying to imagine if we had 4 meetings in one or two weeks, could we be where we are now?

The build team is really striding. We're all hoping the robot is going to work. I think we should have a backup plan as well. They all want to build, so they should.

We're all gearing up for missions, and making our planning as solid as possible. Each team is adjusting to the coming robot, and there's still much to do. The robot team has to speed up.

Bret and his research team are really picking up a lot of information about this project, from flooding in chicago to india. Now we have to find some experts in the field to find out how they deal with it and come up with a solution of their own. So two parts of the project are down. I really want to have a wonderful creative solution and presentation for them to knock'm dead.



this week we have two meetings, and saturday meetings to come in october, november and december. As busy as we are, we need to have a little fun

India flooding

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/09/22/india.floods/
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/10/asia/indiaflood.php
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/shownh.php3?img_id=15058
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=15082

• 2,364 people have died in monsoon floods since June
  
• Latest deaths in Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Orissa and Uttaranchal
  
• Authorities are using motor boats and military helicopters for rescue

Chicago Flooding

Chicago flooding at: http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/disasters-accidents/floods/03005000.topic

notes on reasearch

• Flooding is the No. 1 most likely natural disaster in the US.
• Floods happen a lot in piermont.
• one person is raising his house but many cannot
• no construction is allowed under 10 ft. mean sea level
• this century it will rise two feet.
• puppet show with legos
• game show
• skit
• video
• backup powerpoint or back ground
  
• poster and pointer
• flooding in chicago

By the reasearch team

Week 3

Oh the weeks come by so fast, and its so fast and furious at the 3 hours we have to do as much work as we can.  

This week i had them work on doing some presentation and history while the robot group worked on the robot.  But first, early comers and those who came on time got to do a team build activity using some exo force sets. Its a big challenge to get the team to be a team and getting everyone to work together as a unit.  Teamwork is a big part of this whole program...

The robot group made some great headway this week.  They've married their rear drivetrain to the front steering area and now need to attach 2 more motors - one for steering and the third motor to do actions and such.  it looks great, and whats more amazing is that with two different robots they were able to have the exact same wheel base.   Hopefully the robot will be finalized within the next week.  We want to have one robot to work for both teams so maybe a contest is in order.   There are a lot of challenges with this new robot, hopefully the team will be able to tackle them! 

Meanwhile the rest of the crew had the task of making a presentation about FIRST, FIRST LEGO League and team Bricktron.  I gave them a whole host of information that they had to get from the founders of FIRST to FLL history, up to and including the history of their own team.  At first i had them split up somewhat evenly between new teammates and older ones, but they ended up going old vs. new, with the exception of three up and coming team leaders.  It was a mad dash for information, but that was the easy part i thought.  Forming  a fun presentation was the challenge, so i'll definitely work on doing more of that.  

The older team had a lot of information and got through what they had. Consisting of Alex, Will, Max and Twitch, their delivery was on a good level, but i'd like them to be stronger, and always room for improvement.   Since they were an older group I expected more of them, and this should've been stuff they didnt need to research ~ especially the team history.  

This new group had a bunch of nervous faces, they definitely needed this practice.   I had to make sure that the older ones in this group Bret, Nolan and Anthony didnt speak - but i did want them to be an active part of the presentation.  These kids need an acting/action lesson!   But the rest seemed shaken up, really fighting through the words they had to read.  Sagar, Travis, AlexF, Neil and Ethan did pretty good for their first time though.  Again with practice they'll be even better.   

I also went to the Bronx FLL Launch to represent my team and help out as i could.  Its awesome to have a few weeks ahead of some teams, but they can meet more.  Some teams just got their registrations, kits and field set ups.  We only meet once a week, but soon twice.  I cant wait for that, i think the work will accelerate.

On to week 4!

Presentation

Dean Kamen was the founder of FIRST Lego League in 1998 with mission "Pilot Year". FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition in Science Technology.

2007 - Power Puzzle

2006 - NanoQuest

2005 - Ocean Oddyssey

2004 - No Limits

2003 - Mission Mars

2002 - City Sights

2001 - Arctic Impact

2000 - Volcano Panic

1999 - First Contact

1998 - Pilot Year

In the year 2007 there were 109,410 childen participating in FIRST Lego League. There were also 10 different contests.

The name Bricktron was derived from the name Blacktron, an old lego set. The symbol for Blacktron was a green triangle with a black "B" in it but our symbol now is a black hexagon with a blue "B" in it because our team colors are black and blue

*corrections and additions from coach* 

Bricktron was derived from the Blacktron 2 (green and white) with a large green B in front of a black octagon.  But our colors were changed to reflect the colors of the challenger center, black blue and shining white representing the stars.  This year we will be Bricktron Silver and Bricktron Blue (as suggested by the team)!

Building - Week 2

Building this year's robot is becoming quite the task.  I REALLY hope that the robot works and is 
fast enough.  I think maybe we should build a backup robot if it doesnt.  What work for the team! 

This week the team has been split up into its components, research, robot and missions.  Hopefully the new guys realize that they'll have to do a little of both. I think i'll assign them a mission each this week and they'll have to know it inside and out and present it to me sometime during the season. 

We're planning on using a 4 wheel differntial drive and rack and pinion steering robot this year

.  I hope the motors have enough juice to roll it out, i've seen some

 other robots as such which run fine, it should be great for this years mission since precision isnt too big of an issue.  Its just a matter of getting there.  The build team has done a nice job compacting everything together, but there's still a LOT to get done.  

I've rounded up as many of those wheels as i can, i think i might actually have to buy some more, but i think theyll be good enough for the mat and should over come the obstacles that it needs to.  I cant wait to see the wierd things these guys would come up with to actually finish the missions.  

Our mission boys got a chance to strategize and draw out what they want to do with the robot.  It'll be pretty tough programming this year with the robot, hopefully they use their sensors well.  They'll have another strong technical robot this year and a real hunger to win! 

The research team did a nice job introducing themselves to the question and might already be ready to start doing some hard core researching.  they've identified a few problems already, its just a matter of finalizing and narrowing down it down so that they can focus on it.  I want to get them in touch with the earth observatory in tappan and maybe even get an actual core sample! that'd be too cool. 

I also got to stop by the BRONX FLL Launch at MS194 in the Bronx. There are always so many new faces including the new director of the Bronx programs.  I always wish the team can come and meet all these other teams and teachers, they can all learn so much from eachother.  Next time!

Coach 

Piermont Flooding

I thought having the articles web address would be useful. This is it:
http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008804020467
http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070508/NEWS02/705080367/-1/NEWS
http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/genInfo.php?locIndex=1424
http://www.piermont-ny.com/newsletter/
http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070416/NEWS03/704160427
This article is About global Warming
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/climate_change/

Climate Connections Week1

Well its been a rough start for us this year, but i think we'll do well if we regroup and organize ourselves.  First off there are 2 teams, with more kids to manage and keep track of its work cut out for us.  Theres still some resistance with the older team vs the new kids, but i think they're warming up as time goes on.  

This week we tried to build our robot and didnt get really far.  After speculating the missions  on Wednesday we tried to build a mock robot just to have for practicing.  I divided the team into 4 groups to see who could build the best robot.  It was pretty hard to build without knowing the missions and the teams in general had a hard time getting back into it.  We definitely want to use bigger wheels this year and i think i want to push the team into building a steering drive robot instead of a skid steer type bot.  There were some cool designs.

On Friday the challenge was released and man it's a doozy, Saturday i got a chance to show the team what the missions were and they looked pretty dumfounded. The same with the research project.  I wanted to continue building robot using engineering methods, but i think i need a smaller group for that.   Im still going to push the steering robot design unless one of them comes up with something amazing.   This coming week i'll split them up in their roles.  Older teammates will be captains of respective teams, this should work out well i think.