Best Pre-Season Meeting Ideas

[BJC]

If you’re looking for a fun, valuable, single meeting project this is one that our mentor IKE did with 33 in the fall last year.

The idea is to have the team break into subteams and come up with a paper airplane which flies the furthest/ beats the mentor. This only requires computer paper (3-4 sheets per group) and a open place like a hallway. Groups should be small, 4-5 people to a group max to keep all students involved. Students get 10 minutes to build their first airplanes. When up, one student from each group lines up in the hall to throw. Students then get 5 more minutes to change, rebuild, or practice. When time's up throw again. This time the mentor throws too. He crumples up a sheet of paper and throws (presumably) further than any of the others.

The more important part of the exercise is the lesson the students should take away. Observe which designs went furthest, which were most consistent and compare them to FRC robots. Also stress how those who were able to practice beforehand did much, much better than those whose first time was for real (at the competition).

The biggest lesson they should take away from the exercise is not to overcomplicate the problem. How to get the sheet of paper the furthest down the hall? An actual paper airplane would almost certainly beat a ball of paper if time was given to develop it. However, the ball is the much better more consistent option given the time constraints. More often than not the same holds true for FRC.

Anyways, my team found it very valuable for only the 45 minutes it took to do. I would personally recommend it to all teams both young and old as a fun learning experience.

Regards, Bryan