When children compete, science wins
High-energy rock music pumped through the River City Middle School gymnasium as the Panic Stricken Brainy Chickens faced-off against the Six Itty Bitty Kittys and the Bull Dog in a robot duel.
Children waved chicken-emblazoned signs in a miniwave on the bleachers to cheer on their two lab-coat-wearing teammates operating the robot in the FIRST LEGO League qualifying tournament in Post Falls, organized by the University of Idaho. The Kittys sported tiny ears on the tops of their heads.
Fifteen teams from throughout North Idaho competed. Winners in five categories will head to Boise to challenge teams statewide. Participants are in grades five through eight. “Kids are losing interest in math and science at about the fifth grade,” said Becky Gibson, the University of Idaho’s engineering program coordinator. “We want to find the kids who will be our next engineers.”
The contest generated a newfound enthusiasm for science from Rachel Dawson, a fourth-grader at Ponderosa Elementary in Post Falls.
Dawson said she didn’t like school science but she loved “this science.”
Her father, Mike Dawson, said he enjoyed watching Rachel working with her teammates. “She’s really interested and excited about it,” he said.
Each team used the same basic computer program and LEGO robot parts to build a robot and then programmed its robot to perform specific tasks associated with taking care of the energy needs of a small LEGO town. The robots placed dams across rivers, moved power lines and installed solar panels on tiny houses.
Sometimes, the robots behaved well. Other times, things didn’t go quite as planned.
“We would have knocked over a house and flooded a house,” joked Justin Malloy, when his team’s robot hit a house with dam and then dumped it in the wrong spot in one phase of the competition. “I’m not sure they would have wanted to live there anymore.”
Other rounds went better for Malloy’s team, the Electric Moose.
The teams were awarded points for lowering a satellite’s solar panel, moving wind turbines and planting trees. They were docked points if their robot did things like run into a house.
That happened a lot, but the children took it in stride. Good sportsmanship is a focus of the event.
And when their robots performed the tasks as programmed, the children were ecstatic.
“It’s really cool ‘cause we get to work on the computer and we learn about how to program our robot and trial and error,” said fifth-grader Anna Verhaeghe, of the Sour Skittles team.
Its math-focused motto? “We’ve got mad Skittles.”