[lupjohn]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

"because we try to stick with the philosophy "student designed, student built", things just take a long time."

When you follow that philosophy it is hard to go wrong. Before getting involved in FIRST, we used to design and build Electrathon Race cars (1hp motor, student driven, battery-limited, 1hr race, typically 40km/hr for high school cars to 80km/hr for "pros"). Some of the most gifted students I have ever taught worked together on a team and didn't have their car ready for tech inspection by race day. I figured I had kind of let them down, after all... I could have stepped in and ensured that their car was finished on time.

It was the first time, I think, they had ever really failed at anything at school. Two years later (they all went in to UBC Engineering together) they were in a robotics competition as part of a class project. They cleaned up... their robot was ready two weeks in advance, and they were troubleshooting their sensors and code before other teams even had figured out what their wheels were going to be like. Talking to them afterwards, they described their failure at designing and building their Electrathon car as the motivation to "never let THAT happen to them again."

While I suspect your team will get their machine ready to roll by ship date, it doesn't hurt to remember that we are teachers, coaches and mentors. Our first duty is not to the robot, but to the kids.

That said, it sounds like you aren't too badly off... looking at pictures from last year we have one dated February 18th, where we are all gathered around holding a sign reading "119" signifying that we had got the robot back together AND finally met the weight limit... with four days to go until shipping. (But still with wiring problems, no armour for the circuitry, etc.) This year is another race against the clock.

Good luck,

Jason

Jason;
you've made an excellent point. In any scientific (read engineering also) research effort there is always more than one outcome. As mentors/teachers we always hope that the positive answer is success in building the robot on time and that the experience is a positive one for the students. However, it is necessary for any scientist( students included !) to experience the negative answers as well. The absolutely sure solutions without failures only indicate that the answer was known ahead of time and you merely verified the previously answered question. Asking the right question then accepting the results of your research should result from being able to accept either the positive or negative results in an unbiased manner. Many times the only way this can be learned is by experiencing both success and failure. Penicillin itself would never have been discovered by Fleming if he threw away his contaiminated cultures without studying the failure of his cultures to grow in the manner his research hypothesis predicted.

Best wishes for your teams success as they have a mentor assuring the real success of this year's effort. LRU.