Alex's Lego league team is headed to state. They had competition at Entheos School, last weekend. Let me reexplain what Lego League is.... The first cool thing is.... Only the robot and the parts used for mission IE: trees, buildings, attachments, bridges are actually built out of legos. The team is also asked to program and code the lego robots to carry out missions. Missions can be anything from moving certain pieces to stack, or even stand pieces in other places on the mission board. It can also be moving levers or pushing buttons with the robot. They only get one chance to complete their mission during a run. The team gets three runs during competition. The second cool thing is, the team is asked to come up with an innovative idea. The team came over on Fridays and we brainstormed ways we could use this years theme "City Shapers" to do an innovative idea. They originally thought way too big and wanted to do a working model of West Jordan as a Smart City, with working lights and such. After visiting with then; Mayor Jim Riding, we came up with some other ideas. They decided on waste water smells, particularly from Danone and the Water Treatment facility. Both businesses are here in West Jordan. Danone North America was extremely helpful. They took the team on a tour of the facility and also helped them learn more about how yogurt is made and how the waste water is cleaned and then how it can be used. Danone hasn't always been treated kindly by the community, and we thought they were particularly amazing to take a group of kids and explain things to them. They could have easily turned us away, but they want to do things to "Nourish lives and inspire a healthy world through food", even for a Lego league team. The team also learned how smells travel, watched youtube movies on water waste and water treatment. The team read tons of articles, some about the History of Danone and also some about how filters work. Then they drew up ideas, created, and tested their own prototype smell filters. After testing the prototypes, they reevaluated and fixed problems. The really learned a lot. I learned a lot... The third and last thing that the team is supposed to know and do for competition is be able to work as a team and solve problems, this is known as the Core Values of Lego League. The competition day came and their first mission was super successful. They got 190 points. Unfortunately, everything from there took a back step. But they plowed through. Their project presentation went awesome. The guys came up with a whole name for their prototypes... Gasbusters....and a little song "when something stinks in the neighborhood.... Who you gonna call... Gasbusters".... so fun!!!! Their Core values calls on them to solve a problem as a team. This year they had to move beans without touching them using only a few objects. They were not successful the first go around, they spilled the beans everywhere, but on second chance they got all the beads in except one.... Yay team.... When it came time fore the announcement of awards, they were over joyed to have won first place for their innovative idea, which is now going onto state. Go TEAM!!!
SWAG
Coach giving some advice before the first run. Luckily we had a judge come mention that the robot had to return to off mat. The team went into immediate crisis, but coach talked them off the ledge and they quickly added new coding to each mission and updated the bot.
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