Robotics fun day (moved from chitchat)

[IFB662]

Hey all I am apart of team 662 from Colorado Springs. We are trying to plan fall activities and were thinking about going to a middle school and having a robots/engineering fun day, sorta like a track day for engineering. We are trying to come up with some activities so far we have an egg-drop contest where you have to protect the egg from a fall using only materials that would be in a kit. Also a tinker toy building activity where the kids are partnered up and one partner has to build something from tinker toys then describe how the built it then their partner has to try to build it the group who is closest would win. So any idea you all have would be gladly accepted. Thankyouvin advance

[Radical Pi]

Since this is middle school I'd think they'd be able to handle this: show the kids the game animation and tell them to come up with absolutely any robot design. Let them try thinking outside the box. Maybe you'll learn something too

[LLogan]

I think mousetrap vehicles would be perfect for this. Give them a kit with a few CD's and a mousetrap and see who goes the furthest distance, etc.

[EricH]

Paper airplane challenge: Accuracy and distance. Simply design a paper airplane that is accurate or can go very far, differing point amounts (i.e., farther targets are worth more, total distance in 3 throws plus total points from accuracy is your score).

Lego building challenge: Given a bunch of parts, build us something cool in X category. (May need more specific than just a category, but you get the idea.)

Improve the robot: Take this year's robot, show them the game, and ask them how you can improve it. (Then implement those improvements and take the robot to an offseason competition--great freshman training there, so 2 for the price of 1!)

[IFB662]

Originally Posted by Radical Pi

Since this is middle school I'd think they'd be able to handle this: show the kids the game animation and tell them to come up with absolutely any robot design. Let them try thinking outside the box. Maybe you'll learn something too

The other team leader and i coming up with the fun day absolutely loved this idea it was something we would probably never think of.

Originally Posted by LLogan

I think mousetrap vehicles would be perfect for this. Give them a kit with a few CD's and a mousetrap and see who goes the furthest distance, etc.

This would be good too and very cheap to put the kits together. I am a little worried as mouse traps could be dangerous.

Originally Posted by EricH

Paper airplane challenge: Accuracy and distance. Simply design a paper airplane that is accurate or can go very far, differing point amounts (i.e., farther targets are worth more, total distance in 3 throws plus total points from accuracy is your score).

Lego building challenge: Given a bunch of parts, build us something cool in X category. (May need more specific than just a category, but you get the idea.)

Improve the robot: Take this year's robot, show them the game, and ask them how you can improve it. (Then implement those improvements and take the robot to an offseason competition--great freshman training there, so 2 for the price of 1!)

The Lego one sounds cool.We loved the paper Airplane one, Also we were thinking that something like paper airplane golf would be good too.



Also the team waned to use this as a fundraiser so i was wondering what you all think is an appropriate price, we were think $1 or so just to watch. $15 for a team of 2 including T-shirts. And maybe $10 for a single kid. I'm not too sure how much a T-shirt would cost so these might need to be increased.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by IFB662

Also the team waned to use this as a fundraiser so i was wondering what you all think is an appropriate price, we were think $1 or so just to watch. $15 for a team of 2 including T-shirts. And maybe $10 for a single kid. I'm not too sure how much a T-shirt would cost so these might need to be increased.

I'd say watching free, participating sounds about right especially if you can get a discount on shirts (typically, a T-shirt can run about $10-$15; larger amounts become cheaper per shirt). Then you put out a can for donations.

[Wildcat]

this sounds like a great idea, maybe for a small one-day project you could get some spare supplies, like wood, some small motors (like you would find in a xbox controller), some mini plastic gears and some scrap wire and have the kids build mini electric vehicles out of them providing all the necessary parts and having them race them at the end of the day. also allowing them to keep the car for an $X donation to the team

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by IFB662

This would be good too and very cheap to put the kits together. I am a little worried as mouse traps could be dangerous. .

I'm sure middle schoolers can navigate the perils that come with mousetraps.

[IFB662]

Originally Posted by Wildcat

this sounds like a great idea, maybe for a small one-day project you could get some spare supplies, like wood, some small motors (like you would find in a xbox controller), some mini plastic gears and some scrap wire and have the kids build mini electric vehicles out of them providing all the necessary parts and having them race them at the end of the day. also allowing them to keep the car for an $X donation to the team

Yeah I really like that if we could get the parts that would be a fun one for them.

Originally Posted by EricH

I'd say watching free, participating sounds about right especially if you can get a discount on shirts (typically, a T-shirt can run about $10-$15; larger amounts become cheaper per shirt). Then you put out a can for donations.

Yeah the donations would be good they might even give more than a dollar. And we would most likely order 100 or 200 t-shirts so hopefully they would cost us less than 10 bucks.