Kids and their robots cut loose at Placer science fair

Bianca McKerihan on April 2, 2011 in Education News

Preparing for its international debut, Alice the robot drew a crowd as it picked up batons and negotiated an obstacle course of teeter boards and off-kilter slopes. Its teen creators manned the controls.

Nearby, young inventors snapped together Lego machines to race across a tabletop. Others proudly showed off their solutions to everyday problems. For them, science equaled fun.

On Saturday, Placer County’s first Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Expo drew nearly 250 students, grades 4 through 12, to William Jessup University in Rocklin for a day full of budding genius.

About 125 clever exhibits filled tables in the university’s activities hall. Pulled from their own experiences, the mostly fifth-grade inventors came up with ideas to make their own lives easier. Some examples: David Moore’s “Amazing Morning Organizer” (Velcro-attached toothbrush, toothpaste and other essentials); Madeline Merrill’s automatic small animal feeder (which scooped fish food into a tank with the help of a timer); and Joshua Fink’s conceptual obstacle sensory shoe (a sneaker with “seeing eye” sensors so the wearer could avoid stumbles).

Some inventions were built on whimsy. Fifth-grader Amanda Walker of Lincoln’s Twelve Bridges Elementary School demonstrated her “Rube Goldberg fire suppression system,” featuring “only 377 parts.”

A candle burned through a string, activating scissors to cut another string, which made a fishing weight drop through a trapdoor and a plunger release water from a plastic box into a sprinkler to extinguish the flame.

“The trickiest part was getting the scissors to work right,” she explained of her contraption, which took five days to build.

Twelve Bridges teacher Tom Toy, one of the event’s organizers along with Eric Bull and Alan LeVezu, was as proud of Walker’s presentation as her crazy creation.

“These students are learning real skills they’ll carry into the job place: presentation, research and creation,” Toy said. “They did so much work researching and developing their ideas. It’s fun to see. They feel like experts now.”

The teenage Techno Guards, a team of four students, built the eye-catching Alice, which, like namesake Alice in Wonderland, can grow bigger and smaller. The Techno Guards won the Northern California championships For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, or FIRST. The foursome, hailing from Auburn and Sacramento, are now raising money to compete in the world championships in St. Louis later this month. (See Alice and contribute to the team’s efforts at .)

“I’ve built over a hundred robots, tons and tons and tons of them,” said Maidu High senior Karl LeVezu, 17.

“I started in seventh grade with a Lego club. It changed my life.”

Other robot builders also showed off their inventions.

“I’ve been really interested in engineering from Day One, said Ankhit Pandurangi, a Folsom High sophomore. “When I heard about the robotics team, I jumped on that. It’s been like a roller-coaster ride ever since. This is a lot more fun than sitting around, playing Xbox.”

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