Nemesis' Discovery Day: Catapulting a New Generation into STEM
On October 26th and 27th, Nemesis held our annual Discovery Day. This event once again proved to be a success in spreading STEM throughout our local community. Elementary and middle school students were invited to Robbinsville High School for a fun-filled day of Nemesis-guided LEGO challenges that taught them how to build with EV3-powered LEGOS.
The challenges included building EV3-powered catapults and golf clubs while engaging in fierce competition between 25 groups of two campers. The first high-stakes competition was to see whose catapult could launch a ping-pong ball the farthest; each student put their minds to the test and were able to build their catapults from scratch. Every catapult had their own unique design that displayed the campers' creative minds. The team that launched the ping pong ball the farthest was Team Chris with an impressive distance of 114 inches! The runner ups were Nemesis Jrs with 96 and ER with 86 inches.
The next fun filled challenge of the day was the golf club challenge. After the teams disassembled their catapults and learned about different types of golf clubs, they began work on building a driver and a putter. The setup of this challenge was just like a mini-golf course. The teams would use their driver and putter to get their ping-pong ball into the hole in the least amount of strokes possible. The team that won this challenge were the Lego Builders with just 3 swings! The second part of the golf challenge was to see who's club could hit the ball the farthest. The top 3 teams with the farthest distances over the course of the weekend were Destroyer with 352 inches, Wolfes with 349 inches, and Team Raptors with 269 inches.
In between these challenges, campers had the opportunity to drive the Nemesis competition robot Kronos. All the kids had a blast completing short missions with our 2024 robot; it also taught campers about the challenge Kronos competed in last year. Each camper was successful in driving the robot and launching a note, the orange discs used to gain points, into a target known as the speaker.
The First Lego League (FLL) is an extraordinary and very important part of spreading STEM to kids(8-13yrs) and is a mini version of teams like Nemesis. The kids in a team come together to build a robot using LEGO and have their robot compete in competitions. Discovery Day offered an FLL table where Nemesis team members were able to expose the campers to what FLL is and how they can continue to learn and improve their STEM skills from it. FLL is a great way for kids to start in their STEM journey and many Nemesis members have been on FLL teams in the past. The two days ended on a high note when the campers enjoyed a few delicious slices of pizza.
Overall, Discovery Day fulfilled its goal of spreading STEM to the younger generation within Robbinsville. The competitive challenges between teams, having a chance to drive Kronos, and eating pizza proved to put a big smile on campers faces as they left the high school!
