Another Dynamic Discovery Day
After the Covid-19 pandemic, Robbinsville High School is back to hosting the Nemesis classic, Discovery day. On the fifteenth and sixteenth of October, Nemesis hosted two , discovery day camps, managing to reach over One-Hundred students. Every year, the Nemesis FRC team hosts an event, open to elementary and middle school students, where the campers work with current team members to give them a fun and enjoyable introduction to STEM. The program has them complete a plethora of age-appropriate STEM challenges, meant to offer a stimulating, but fun, experience for the students.
This year, there were two challenges, each targeted at one of the two different participating age groups in the event. For the younger students (second through fourth grade), the challenge was to make a robot that could kick a ball and a goalie to stop the ball from reaching the edge of the table using Lego Technic and RCX motors. The older students, from fifth to sixth grade, were challenged to use similar NXT and Lego Technic pieces to create a robot that would “bowl” a wiffle ball into a set of concentrated pins.Once they successfully completed this, they were challenged to code the robot using NXT software to bowl the wiffle ball with just the press of a button.
The campers were split into groups of 2-3 students, and were mentored by current members of the FRC team. The student-mentors assisted the campers in creating the best robots possible, while still understanding the science behind the challenge, and allowing the campers to maintain creative control. . Elan Ronen, a junior on the Software Team, mentored three young students. Elan admired his students’ ingenuity. “Their communication and perseverance struck me the most. They were experimenting with the robot design in the beginning, but after extensive amounts of collaborative brainstorming, they were able to come up with a design. The issue was that their design kept on breaking -- still, after many trials, these students were able to utilize the engineering design process to create a great design.” Elan, and many other student-mentors, found that recovering from adversity is what helped these students grow the most; “Whether it be through the build or code, the students never gave up.” Robert Gao, Design Lead, stated, “As time went on, they really got better at cooperating and problem solving together and I sort-of…just…got to sit back and watch. It was really cool.”
The young students were also given other opportunities to explore robotics. The campers got a chance to look at a robot built by the local FLL team “IDK”. The campers also got a chance to drive Iris, Nemesis’ robot from the 2022 season. Students were amazed by Iris’ smooth movement, and complex design. The robot driving was a student favorite, with almost half of the campers doing the activity twice!
This discovery day played a significant role in introducing young students to robotics and STEM. It was great to see all the students leave with a smile on their faces, and a newfound love of robotics and STEM.