HEAT Robot Club at work again!

I am long overdue to post the happenings of our illustrious Robot club in these parts of the world. The challenge officially started September 13th with Kickoff day and six of our representatives (4 team members and 2 adults) were allowed to participate in viewing the challenge before us. For those of you who don't remember from last year, we have six weeks to complete the assignment and compete at the BEST Robot Game day slated for October 24th! Our mission was to establish a make believe company, employ team members (they learned the skill of writing a resume and a cover letter and submitting it as any employee seeking a position would), split up the teams, and build, display, cheer, notify the public, notebook, and photograph all the happenings of building a robot. The Robot, SLICK (Supercatalyst Liquid Isoctane Conversion Kontraption), will perform several duties of gathering catalyst (tennis balls), energy (tomato paste cans), H2O (racket balls), CO2 (Small beach balls), Benzene tankers (small back of truck like an 18 wheeler would haul), and more and the team that puts these together to make a formula that would equal Isoctane and Ethanol wins! Now if you haven't figured out as well as building a robot we had to learn a little chemistry along the way. Our Robot picks up, scoops, presses buttons, and so much more. The drivers and spotters are this week working on their strategy to decide what piece of the formula is most important and how many of them they need. We have 3 minutes each round to finish our assignment. This year is different however because we are allowed to build upon what we have already gathered from the previous rounds. Our media/PR team have worked non stop in getting the word out to the public about our mission, our needs (monetary), and our sponsors. The display team continues to work furiously ensuring that our display shows our hard work to the judges come game day. The Jr. build team will meet tomorrow to put the finishing touches on our robot (decor)! The notebook that contains all the demographics of our teams, our technical side of building the robot, all our work thus far and more was proudly turned in last weekend at Mall day. Sarah continues to battle for the best driving position. Her and a friend gathered many supplies this weekend when they practiced and as in the words of a gentlemen beside me (not part of our team or any team, just a spectator) said, "She has changed my opinion on women drivers!" LOL! She was neck and neck with competing for a CO2 (beach ball) with another robot. We all had a good laugh, but in the end our fearless leader of our team agreed that when she and her friend Jordi obtain their drivers licence we don't want to having parking wars with them, because they would win hands down. Sarah is also part of the media/PR team (she might be on TV come this Wednesday nightly news!) Zech is a spotter this year and working well with the drivers and helping them observe the field and part of the Website Team (check it out at http://www.wfmars.com/ ). Isabella continues her cheer leading skills by being part of the Spirit team and Media/PR. Sarah and Isabella are part of the display team as well.

This year has proven to be a challenge of late night meetings, day meetings, dealing with school in the midst of that, and the curve of learning chemistry as well. HEAT Robot club has met the challenge though and their goal is to win 1st or 2nd to go all the way to state! I'll keep you posted!