Labels

Sunday, December 5, 2010

NXT Awesomeness Challenge: Tanya, Kenji and Allen

The winner of the Awesomeness is the team of Tanya, Allen and Kenji, who got their robot to do the Hokey Pokey. Question: what if the Hokey Pokey IS what it is all about?

NXT Awesomeness Challenge, Joel and Grant

Second place in the Awesomeness Challenge goes to Joel and Grant, who made a catapult that suceeded in getting a red ball to go into a small cup.

NXT Awesomeness Challenge: Henry and Milla

Third place in the Awesomeness Challenge for NXT robots goes to Henry and Milla, who get their robot to dance and speak.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

NXT turn Challenge: Henry and Milla

Henry and Milla from 7th period putting their robot through the NXT turn challenge.

NXT turn Challenge: Steven and Chris


Steven and Chris from 6th Period have their NXT go through the turning challenge.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Underwater Robots! Pizza!

As you might know, ASIJ has been hosting a visiting scholar, Dr. Robin Bradbeer, in order to advance the robotics program.  A specialist in the field of underwater robotics, Dr. Bradbeer is working mainly with Don Chambers and the Robotics program in the high school, but also took the time to share her expertise with students in Invent and Engineering in the MS, as well as 6th grade science. This past Monday, students from I&E got the chance to test drive one of the large underwater robots made in the HS as well as a small kit robot - exactly the type that I&E will start working on this week. Not only was it cool for the students to maneuver the robots, but we managed to get a pizza party out of the deal, as well. Yes!!!
(Video done on Videospin; music from freeplaymusic.com)



Thursday, October 7, 2010

Success #4

This project was the second in 7th period, with Henry, Kenji and Allen. Again, the task for this one was to open a lock, which turned out to be quite hard, given the amount of force needed to pull the locking bar out of the lock casing. After dozens of tries, we improvised to have a mysterious force appear out of the ether and provide a little timely assistance. Think of it as the 7th grade version of Maradona's Hand of God goal. Nice work, fellas.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

7th period, group 1 - persistence pays off!

Project from T-Jax and Milla. Didn't quite happen the way they drew it up, but the mission (to open a lock) was a success. I don't know if it is obvious from the video, but the girls made a replica of a school locker complete with handle, and then set the lock so that it would fully open when pulled. This was a very hard task, given the amount of force needed to pull the lock apart, but eventually they got it to work. Sorry for the bad camera work in this one - I didn't quite do it justice.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Success #2! Good part starts at 0:22

Team of Yume, Joel, and Chris. After many, many tries, it worked! Again, task was to get a golf ball in a cup. This was a real team effort, as Thomas, Grant and Steven also helped to get everything set up and working correctly.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Success #1!!!

The first successful, filmed Rube Goldberg machine of the semester, courtesy of Thomas, Steven and Grant. The task was to get a golf ball into some sort of cup, in the most elaborate way possible, using a limited set of materials. These guys really did a great job of working together and coordinating their separate sections into a really good device. Great job, guys!!

Welcome!

This is the class blog for ASIJ's Invent and Engineering classes during the 2010-2011 school year. The class is supervised by Mr. Erwin and Dr. Jacobson and provides kids a chance to make stuff, break stuff, figure stuff out and make it better. This blog will be a running record of our diverse activities this semester: Rube Goldberg machines, CO2 cars, bottle rockets and NXT robots. We hope you enjoy the blog as much as we enjoy taking (and teaching!) the course!