Hidden at the end of the first floor of the Lady Ivy Kwok Wu Science and Mathematics Center is a small work room where students are building robots. Not the kind with arms and legs, but with four wheels and a lot of circuits.
With two to four members per team, students are learning how to design, build and program robots. They also simulate competition in the practice arena, recently moved to Wu from one of the classrooms. The students are preparing to compete in Trinity College's annual robotics competition on March 31.
Team adviser Jim Mooney, with help from science teachers Chris Ritacco, Amanda Benedict, Walt Warner, Will Orben, Dana Bertuglia and Peter Saltsman, is also preparing 15 to 20 students for the Science Olympiad on April 1. The Science Olympiad incorporates 23 events: one involves robotics, six have build-ahead components. Other events require students to do things like design, build and play musical instruments or to make a helicopter with unique characteristics or specifications. Unlike the robotics competition, or the engineering and physics competitions in which Taft competes, the Science Olympiad has events for biology students such as Protein Modeling, Disease Detective and Forensics.
"These are good opportunities for our students," explains Mooney. "They get a challenge while having fun. They get to experience something that stretches them academically, and they get hands-on working experience. The process allows them to get a taste of what interests them, to see if this might be something that interests them in college, and if this might be the thing for them to do."
Taft placed first in the Yale Physics Olympics last fall, and will again compete in the annual JETS Team engineering competition in early March.
Video of Taft robot at Trinity competition in 2010
(link to bulletin article) http://www.taftschool.org/news/folders/robotics12/BUrobotics2010.pdf