By: Julie Robinson
The robotics team had their first competition October, 30-31, 2009, at Mississippi State University in Starkville, MS. The BEST (Boosting Engineering Science and Technology) competition consisted of many different individual events including oral presentation, table display, t-shirt design, robotics competition, notebook composition, and team spirit and sportsmanship. The team achieved 2nd in BEST which includes all of the events. This win has qualified the team for the South’s BEST at Auburn University, which is a tournament for the best robots from high schools all over the eastern side of the U.S. The 17 members who went to this competition are Jim Barron, John Baxter, Daniel Beck, Dillon Beck, Dylan Bracey, Stephen Byrd, Zac Duncan, Devin Hebert, Paul Hegerle, Hunter Hope, Hayes Line, Reed Mcfadden, Quentin Parsons, Karen Phan, Arik Shams, Gunnar Thorderson, Cade Willis, and Kaytlin Benzel. On the Friday night of the competition the team completed the oral presentation, and on Saturday the team completed the rest of the individual events. They competed against Long Beach, Holy Cross, and Horn Lake along with five other schools.
The process of building the robot required lots of hard work and time. The robotics team meets after school Mondays-Thursdays. They have worked on their robot for the past six weeks every afternoon and will continue to work on the robot until the next competition at Auburn University.
First, the team had to know the objective for the robot. Then, they had to brainstorm design ideas starting with the more simple designs leading to the more difficult designs. The objective was to create a robot that could efficiently pick up tomato cans, tennis balls, beach balls, and racket balls. Each of these objects represents a different molecule, and when put together in different combinations, the ‘molecules’ create different chemicals. The tomato can is the substitute for catalyst, the tennis ball is the substitute for energy, the beach ball is the substitute for carbon dioxide, and the racquet ball is the substitute for water. The faster the robot could move to retrieve the objects to create the chemicals the better. The Oak Grove robot weighs ten pounds and moved as fast as one of the lightest robots at the competition.
The robotics team has worked very hard on their robot and hopes to perform well at the BEST competition at Auburn University on December 11-12.
