11-21-2019 Innovation Projects: Experts and Prototypes

11-21-2019 Innovation Projects: Experts and Prototypes

Did you know that one of the great sayings about FIRST LEGO League is "It's not all about the robot"? 

The robots are just one small piece of the picture. The NERDS teams are also working hard on an INNOVATION PROJECT about this year's theme: City Shaper.  This year, teams need to IDENTIFY A PROBLEM with a building or public space in their community, RESEARCH that problem with a variety of sources, including EXPERTS in a related field of study, DEVELOP an INNOVATIVE SOLUTION that has the potential to solve their problem, and present their solution to audiences that could actually benefit from their ideas. 

 

Our four teams have the following Innovation Projects in progress:

  • NERDS the Smarties have a plan to make cars run on garbage to solve both overcrowded landfills and the overuse of fossil fuels.
  • The Macho Nacho NERDS, are developing "Permeable Pavement Cubes", a new kind of permeable pavement to solve stormwater street flooding.
  • NERDSzilla have developed PowerPipes, microturbines that produce electricity from the flow of water in your building's plumbing
  • The QiiWii NERDS  made a talking monster garbage can that tells jokes and thanks you for throwing away your trash (in multiple languages)- keeping school cafeterias clean.

 

Our teams have to contact experts about their ideas as part of their research and presentations. Imagine my surprise when I get an email, thanking me for letting my kids take the iniative of setting up a guest speaker from the PUD Hydropower project. The NERDzilla team called up the PUD and arranged for an engineer as a guest speaker without my help! Jason Cohn brought in hydropower demos, and worked them through the math of how to determine whether their microturbines would generate enough power for a building.

Jason Cohn from the PUD demonstrates Peleton Generator

Many teams just leave their ideas at the "idea" stage- perhaps making drawings or lego models of their plan. Our Qiiwii NERDS this year have built a complete working model of their idea, and have even begun testing it out in the school cafeteria! Their garbage monster has been happily eating garbage and telling the North MS students "THANK YOU!".

QiiWii NERDS with their working prototype