News and Reports
News Release
Robotics competition electrifies young minds
By Ashley Meeks Sun-News reporter
Posted: 10/25/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT
One of this year's BEST Robotic Competition entries.
LAS CRUCES -- Flammable hydrocarbons and high-octane fuel! Tomato sauce cans and tennis balls! The Delamater Activity Center thrummed with cheers Saturday as hundreds of middle and high school students mentally willed their robots to success.
The annual Boosting Engineering Science and Technology competition drew 22 teams from as far away as San Jon, Clovis, Rio Rancho, Deming, Hatch, Chaparral to New Mexico State University, the farthest-west competition hub in the country.
"It is spreading," said NMSU electrical engineering professor Sheila Horan, who started the competition in New Mexico in 2001 and has seen students go on to become aerospace engineers, technical writers and entrepreneurs. "It gives them the chance to work on something and see something they've designed work."
It is a lot of work, including sportsmanship, marketing, interviews, showing spirit, formal notebooks and, of course, a robot with functioning wheels and arms. And though some principles are the same from year to year, teams only get six weeks to design, build and test their 'bot to that year's task.
"You never know what the game's going to be," Horan said.
This year, the game was replacing fossil fuel use.
"What you're trying to do is make these chemical reactions with CO2 balls and catalysts, tennis balls, water molecules and 'energy,'" explained 12-year-old Ian Rankin of Las Cruces, who was helping a team whose "brain is not quite working right" at the repair station.
The eight-person Las Cruces High School team put their robot together in eight days, admitted freshman Mark Ting, 12, who hopes to one day work in medicine.
"The robots have to collect objects on the floor and take them to one place," Ting said, explaining the scaled-up collection of tomato paste cans and racquetballs, which symbolized the fuel-production process. "I just like seeing how things work."
"I love working with this age group because they'll be banging their heads against the wall. We're teaching them to program in C and they were literally doing the happy dance when they figured it out," said electrical engineer, home-school mom and Project N.E.O. (New Engineering Opportunities) mentor Deanna Rankin. "Sometimes, they get frustrated about not winning ... It's a hard lesson to learn, but it's an important life lesson, how to graciously fail."
One change advisers noted over the years has been a steady increase in girls competing, up to a third of competitors -- running jig saws, learning to weld or scoring acceptance to MIT.
"A lot of times, the girls will come in and not want to touch that stuff," Rankin said. "These girls are not ones you can shove off on the side and they're going to design your shirts."
They might, however, design fuzzy blue octopus hats, a gag on this year's theme, "High Octane," such as the one worn by Deming High School science teacher Creighton Edington, whose team took first place in robotics.
"Not a lot of kids are taking things apart like they used to. No one's going to take apart an MP3 player because there are no moving parts," he said. The BEST meet, he said, not only taught that critical thinking, it channeled the competitive urge. "I have kids sitting there at 8 o'clock still working on things ... you're not forcing them to be there."
After being rated by more than 50 judges, winners go on to the regional competition at the University of North Texas in December. Even if they don't make it to Denton, Texas, as the competition literature says, "the world awaits!"
"I always tell my students I don't care if they win, I want them to have a moving robot because no kid's going to get excited over a block of wood," said LCHS science teacher and Math, Engineering and Science Achievement adviser Jennifer Hamilton, whose team took second place and went to regionals in 2008 -- their first year competing. "I don't care if they go on and major in underwater basket-weaving, if that's what makes them happy."
And the winners are ...
Here are the results of Saturday's annual Boosting Engineering Science and Technology competition at NMSU:
- 1st place BEST: Rio Rancho Home School
- 2nd place BEST: San Jon, N.M.
- 3rd place BEST: Clovis High School
- 1st place game competition: Deming High School
- 2nd place game: San Jon
- 3rd place game: Clovis High School
- 4th place game: Los Lunas Middle School
- Founders award: Clovis
- Most robust robot: La Academia Dolores Huerta
- Best Website: Rio Rancho Home School
- Most elegant: White Sands Middle School
- Best Middle School: Los Lunas Middle School
- Best T-shirt: Picacho Middle School
- Best Oral Presentation: Rio Rancho Home School
- Raytheon BEST notebook: Rio Rancho Home School
- DACC Tech Studies: Best spirit and sportsmanship: Los Lunas Middle School
- Klipsch School of ECE Best table interview and display: Rio Rancho Home School
- NMSU College of Engineering most participation: Deming High School
- Jacobs technology Blood Sweat & Tears award: San Jon
- Calculex most photogenic: Rio Rancho
Ashley Meeks can be reached at ameeks@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5462.