Quote:
Originally posted by KenWittlief
If a student is in college studying engineering or science, then FIRST has already acheived its goal for that person.
FIRST was started by Dean Kamen & Woody Flowers, back when Dr Flowers was already doing something similar in one of his mechanical engineering classes at MIT.
the MIT students were required to build a robot to compete in a table top game as part of the course. It was so popular that it was shown on NOVA with Alan Alda back in the 80's (how many remember seeing those? the games with the pingpong balls?)
many universities already participate in enginnering contests much more challenging that FIRST - they have race car competitions (RIT has won the world championship) - off road vehicle competitions, flying machine contests - all kinds of stuff.
Once you get to college you will look back at FIRST and think its kids stuff. :c)
You had a great idea - proven by the fact that its already being done - but done on a much higher level!
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While there are other college level competitions that are difficult, I'm not sure if they are exactly more challenging than FIRST. The key difference is that they are different than FIRST. One of the big parts of FIRST is that it's key part is mentorship. At the college level it's much harder for that to happen. When you have college students mentoring high school students, I think that that's probably just as challening as college students working on a Formula 1 team by themselves.
What does it mean that RIT's won both the world championship in Formula 1 and FIRST?
Matt