FIRST season; almost

I heard through the grapevine yesterday that our FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team will have their first meeting on Friday. I'm not sure if this is official, but it's time for us to start getting back together.

Our team (904) is co-hosting the West Michigan Regional Invitational with 3 other area teams. This is the first time West Michigan has had an off-season event, and it should be a lot of fun. This event will be Saturday October 25 at Grandville High School. We will be using our machines that we built for the 2008 season (FIRST Overdrive). It's time to start charging up the batteries and getting some kids driving the robot.

We are now 101 days away from the official start of FIRST season; that is the 2009 kick-off. Last year we had weekly meetings during the fall to learn and build our team. Hopefully we will be doing something similar this year. Last year FIRST posted clues in December. These clues were supposedly leading us to some early knowledge of what the game would be for the year. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out their meaning, and got nowhere with it. Even after kick-off I still didn't understand the clues.

Anyhow, summer is over, school is back in session and it's almost FIRST season.

FIRST Objective 2.0

Okay, it's time to get back to blogging again.

Over the summer I have taken some time to give my website www.firstobjective.org a new look. I've had some people suggest that I spruce up the colors and make the front end a bit more simple.

So, I've tried to do just that. I've also added a nifty Google Lively chat room for anyone interested in chatting about FIRST in a virtual world (similar to Second Life).

There is also a Google map that will allow teams and students to place a marker and some info. Hopefully teams that would welcome outside students can be matched up with students in an area that are looking for a team.

I've also started the bare bones of a FIRST wiki that is intended to explain FIRST to people that are learning about it for the first time.

Anyhow, if you haven't been to FIRST Objective in a while, go check it out.

www.firstobjective.org

Do the Math

For anyone that reads my blog, you'll know that I primarily write about FIRST Robotics Competition. Avid readers will also know that I occasionally get side-tracked, which is what I am right now.

Everyone knows that this is "politics season", and I promise I will not blog about politics. But one thing is being said over and over again, we (the United States) are spending 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq. No matter how you feel about the war, that is a lot of dough. So I got to thinking...

One thing that is always said in FIRST is "That's why we do the math", and I can to do simple math, so I gave it a whirl.

I started wondering how many new jobs could be created with that kind of money. Take a wild guess at how many really good jobs 10 billion dollars a month could sustain. 10,000?, 50,000? 500,000? Nope, over 1.5 million! At a salary of $80,000 / year! AND Uncle Sam would be collecting taxes on that too!

That could be 1.5 million new jobs searching for ways to sever our dependence on foreign oil. These could be high-tech jobs in energy, robotics, medicine; solving the major problems that we are facing today.

FIRST is all about solving problems.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that some of the 10 billion is benefiting the United States. We're paying companies here at home to make guns, tanks, trucks, etc... We are also funding companies such as Haliburton and Blackwater (maybe not anymore, I'm not sure). My point is, the money is not being spent to solve our energy problems, but on war to make sure we get the oil we depend on. One day, the oil will run out, I promise.

One of my favorite quotes:
"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them."
-Albert Einstein

More about FIRST next time.

Mythbusters on Science Education

Adam Savage from the hit TV show "Mythbusters" published this article in the September 2008 issue of Popular Mechanics. Adam points out 3 ways to fix science education in the United States, and guess what, FIRST is one of them. Let me quote his ways:

1. Let students get their hands dirty.

It’s really difficult to absorb things just by being told about them—I know I don’t learn well that way. If students could get their hands dirty in science class they’d be more likely to internalize information. You can lecture about the surface tension of water, but it’s not as effective as conducting an experiment with a needle and a single beam balance. Jamie and I are in touch with a lot of teachers from industrial engineering programs, and one of them told us he thinks our show has helped shift the emphasis from the strictly theoretical to a more hands-on approach. (For an example of kids doing down-and-dirty engineering, click here.)

2. Yes, spend more money on science.

We like to do things on the cheap at MythBusters, and we often find the most elegant solution is also the least expensive. But we still need significant resources. It drives me crazy that one of the first things to go when educational budgets get slashed is science supplies for kids to play with, so students end up just listening to explanations of scientific concepts. MythBusters is not a show where two guys read about stuff—it’s two guys doing stuff. When we need a valve to fire a baseball at nearly the speed of sound, we get it. Most of my friends who are grade school teachers pay for their own supplies. People say, “You can’t just throw money at the problem.” By all means throw money at the problem! Learning science by experi­mentation yields innovation, inspiration, intuition and fascination.

3. Celebrate mistakes.

A good scientist will tell you that being wrong can be just as interesting as being right. The same holds for our show. We love hearing from fans who challenge our conclusions—especially kids. We gave a talk at the Uni­versity of Florida, and a 12-year-old girl asked us why, when we tested whether elephants are afraid of mice, we only used white mice. She was right; we should have tested different­colored ones. For our fuel-efficiency myth, windows versus a/c, we drove two cars at 45 mph until they ran out of gas; our data showed that driving with the windows open was more efficient. But a fan pointed out that over a certain speed, open windows create so much drag that a/c is more efficient. We repeated the test at 55 mph—and the fan was right. Kids need to know that teachers and textbooks don’t have all the answers—and that’s okay. Sometimes, even a failed experiment can be a good learning experience.

That was a quote from the above mentioned article written by Adam Savage. If you didn't see the "click here" link in item 1, go back and click it. Popular Mechanics has an entire article devoted to how schools have been building robots for the FIRST Robotics Competition over the past years. There are even a couple video clips that explain more about FIRST; take a few minutes and watch them!